


Four Letter Words

by Kirklockian



Series: Four Letter Words [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: "Earn Your Happy Ending", Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fantasy, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Male My Unit | Byleth, NewGame+, Not A Fix-It, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other FE:TH Characters and Ships Not Mentioned in the Tags, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Spoilers For All Of The Routes, Those Who Slither in the Dark, Touches on Darker Themes Like PTSD and Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23938663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirklockian/pseuds/Kirklockian
Summary: Byleth always believed his bond with Sothis meant he was made of sterner stuff, but it turns out he’s no more immune to the ghosts of the past than his students are. Now, after the war, his life is best summarized in a series of four letter words.An interpretation of “NewGame+”, the ending of Crimson Flower, M!Edeleth’s relationship, their relationships with the other characters, and the unseen war against Those Who Slither in the Dark.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth, Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Four Letter Words [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789468
Comments: 33
Kudos: 91
Collections: Bylad x Edelgard





	1. Ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: violence; violent images; suicidal ideation; major character death; human (Nabatean) experimentation (mentioned); terminal illness (mentioned); alcohol; spoilers for Silver Snow. 
> 
> Chapter Tags: canon-divergent; post-canon; angst; stream of consciousness; exposition; character study; geopolitics; world-building; time travel; "NewGame+"; M!Byleth; Mercenary!Byleth; Character-Developed!Byleth; Sothis; Jeralt Eisner; Rhea; Dimitri Blaiddyd; Edelgard von Hresvelg; the Black Eagle students; Seteth; an OC (mentioned); the "bad" ending made worse; "Byleth thou hast goofed bigly".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Please don't sue me. I don't own anything and I have no money. 
> 
> So, yeah, I wrote a thing. It's been years since I wrote anything so I'm a bit rusty. Please, bear with me. 
> 
> My goal with this fanfic is to basically challenge myself as a writer and write things I would normally avoid (a 100,000-plus words story, dialogue-heavy chapters, action scenes, etc). I'm basically writing what I want to read, and I'm writing this story in particular because I love Edelgard and her agency as a complex female character. But I also graduated with a minor in history, A Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorite book series, and I love to play Crusader Kings II on "ironman" mode, if that tells you anything about me (read: I enjoy medieval history/fantasy, political intrigue, and realism). So, yes, my writing may swing that way.
> 
> This will NOT be a rewrite of FE:TH. (I have already read a few fanfics that explore the idea of rewriting the game or the “NewGamePlus” mechanic and do it well.) The second chapter will be starting during Chapter 18 of the Crimson Flower route. I am mostly using the "NewGamePlus" mechanic as a post-game plot device. It is my intention to give CF a more conclusive ending; explore Edelgard's relationship with Byleth, Edelgard's past, and character supports that weren't in-game; and resolve the war with the Agarthans. Maybe even delve beyond that if there is a demand or if I feel like it.
> 
> I will be taking some liberties and trying to tie together the game's weakest plot points (ex: why does Edelgard seem to have strong feelings for Byleth even in the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes? Why is Byleth sick throughout Chapter 8?) so don't be surprised if a few things are different than they were in-game. I might use flashbacks to show these divergences. That said, I will be trying to remain as faithful to the game and its characters as I can without diverging too much from each route.
> 
> Moving forward, I will be manually listing the "warnings" and "tags" for each individual chapter at the top of that chapter (see above). So, please, read through those if you are sensitive to certain topics, ships, characters, spoilers, etc. For this reason, I will also be including a brief summary ("TL;DR") at the end of each chapter for anyone who would like to skip ahead.
> 
> When I read fanfiction, I know I sometimes skip chapters to get to the "good" parts. I am clearly tagging each chapter so you can do that too. That way, you should have an easier time skipping straight to the angst or fluff or hurt/comfort or whatever it is that you're in the mood to read.
> 
> I think I will attempt one chapter a month to start while my personal life is full of uncertainties right now. But rest assured: I do have oh so many plans.
> 
> Now being beta-read by Raj8 and Kaltmacher07!

# Chapter One:

# (Prologue)

# Ache

_After the Reunification War ended, the landscape of Fódlan changed once again as nations and bonds continued to break down. The corrupt nobles of the Adrestian Empire were the first to turn on each other as every noble house sought to usurp the imperial throne for its own ends. The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus suffered a similar fate when House Mateus, which had miraculously avoided most of the fighting by remaining within their territory and refusing all calls to leave it. Not long after the war, Mateus's intact army swept through what was left of those who had been loyal to House Blaiddyd, and they claimed the throne by right of conquest. In the Leicester Alliance, the title of Grand Duke was eventually given to Holst Goneril, who scarcely had time to finish grieving for his sister before an army of angry Almyrans appeared beyond Fódlan’s Throat amid whispers of wanting vengeance. The Church of Seiros, led by Seteth after Lady Rhea’s death, tried to keep the peace within the three realms but ultimately failed, its army of knights too weakened to offer more than a token resistance. For everyone else, the roads had never been more unsafe as hordes of demonic beasts roamed farther than ever before, bandit groups grew bolder by the day, and mysterious mages in black robes were spotted in increasing numbers throughout Derdriu, Enbarr, and Fhirdiad._

_In the tempestuous years that followed, it was a lucrative time to be a mercenary._

  


* * *

  


20 Horsebow Moon, Imperial Year 1218 

In taverns and inns all across Fódlan, everyone knew at least one tale about the enigmatic mercenary who had — _single-handedly,_ some said — ended the Reunification War. Noble or commoner, rich or poor, men and women alike spoke of him in hushed tones over flagons of ale and games of dice with the same kind of devout admiration they’d had for his father. If they were drunk enough, two strangers could quibble over the details of the mercenary’s life with the same fanatical enthusiasm as church scholars when they debated the histories of Seiros and the four saints. They speculated about his past, lauded his heroic feats, and argued about the many battlefields he had fought on. Children fell asleep listening to tales of his bravery. Entire operas were written about the war and his role in ending Edelgard’s tyrannical reign. They called him the Ashen Demon, the Blade Breaker II, the Hero of Fódlan, and Seiros herself reborn, but they rarely, if ever, used his true name. Considering Fódlan’s ongoing turmoil, it was almost mind-boggling how quickly the tales spread. And the more people talked, the more impossible the tales became, year after year. Decade after decade. 

They said he killed his first enemy at age ten. They said he could kill an entire horde of demonic beasts by himself and regularly did so for the remotest villages. They said he was a descendant of Nemesis, the King of Liberation himself, and had once wielded the legendary Sword of the Creator. 

From there, the tales only grew worse. Less grounded in reality. 

They said he could become an actual demon in battle, using his razor-sharp fangs and claws to shred his foes to pieces. They said he did not age, that he could not die. They said he killed as easily as he breathed and did so without a drop of emotion. They said, for good or ill, he had been sent by the Goddess to liberate Fódlan from never-ending war. 

And then there were the conspiracies. 

Some said that he was the secret love-child of the late, but much-loved, Lady Rhea. They said he was her spitting image all the way down the glowing green eyes and seafoam-green hair, and they questioned if Jeralt the Blade Breaker had been his father at all. Who knew? History was full of surprising turns. Pilgrimages to Garreg Mach Monastery were once seen as an important part of every noble’s duty as demonstrations of their faith. The blood of emperors, kings, and grand dukes could flow in his veins, they whispered. Maybe it was because of his parentage that he was made a professor at the prestigious Officers’ Academy while still so young. Maybe, they continued, their voices low, he was the rightful heir to the empire, the kingdom, or House Riegan. Emperor Ionius XI in particular had been known for having many consorts, and Lady Rhea was said to have been beautiful. Edelgard might have had another motive for declaring war against the church in pitting sibling against sibling. But why he had never stepped forward to claim his birthright, no one could say. If such things were true, he alone had the ability to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all. 

They said all this as if one man _could_ do such a thing. _And they believed it._

If nothing else, the tales were a great source of amusement, thought Byleth as he paid his bar tab, readjusted his hood to better cover his face, and went on his way, returning to camp for the night. Tomorrow, the Jeralt Company would move on and look for contracts elsewhere. “In these parts,” the grizzled innkeep had told him slowly, scrutinizing him over the bar top, “the only one hiring mercenaries is Count Bergliez. And _you_ look too young to be of much help anyway.” 

But Rhea’s love-child? Edelgard’s half-brother? Fódlan’s rightful heir? That one was certainly new. Maybe it was just the alcohol, but the entire idea was silly and made him chuckle quietly, deep in his throat. 

In a way, he almost envied them for their imaginations. He could only wish that he saw his own life with the same wonder they did and not as the failure it undoubtedly was. But then again, he thought as he plodded along the dirt road that led towards camp, everyone else had such short memories. Most were too young to remember a time when Fódlan was not at war with itself. Even he himself at times wondered if those hazy days at Garreg Mach Monastery had been anything but a pleasant dream. If he had been anything but a broken man who thought too much and felt too little. 

He never doubted for long at least. All he had to do was look into a mirror to see the truth. The green eyes and hair, and the young, brooding face. So many years had passed, and yet he remained unchanged. It was . . . unsettling. 

During the day, it was almost possible to trick himself into believing he was whole. During the day, he could focus on the minutiae of commanding a mercenary company: ensuring they had enough weapons and supplies, haggling with merchants over the price of vulneraries, mediating disputes between his people, negotiating with nobles and commoners alike for a heavier sack of gold, caring for their various mounts, plotting their route to the next town or city, distributing the monthly pay, setting up and dismantling camp at the appropriate times. As a child, wide-eyed and curious, he had watched Jeralt do these things so many times and make it look easy. Now, it came to him too as second nature. He could lose himself in the white noise of mercenary life, the mindless marching, and the adrenaline of battle. He embraced the little monotonous things that helped to keep his mind quiet. Even the watered-down alcohol and the ridiculous rumors. 

It was the nights that were always the hardest, and tonight his mind was wandering more than usual. For good reason. 

Byleth turned off the road and half-walked, half-slid down a muddy embankment. From here, he could just make out the cluster of campfires in the distance, nestled in between a copse of trees, and he could hear the faint bubbling of a brook somewhere off in the dark to his right. Even after darkness had fallen, the hot, early autumn air still clung to his skin, thick and sticky, causing the small ball of flame in the palm of his hand to flicker as if it might go out. 

At night, his mind became unbearably loud. Left to his thoughts, he could do little but wonder where he had gone wrong, if this life wasn’t a sort of penance for the choices he had made. He picked at the hollowness in his chest like a crusted-over scab, despite knowing it would be better if he just left it alone. Night after night, he picked and he picked, ruminating on all of the decisions he had made up to the present moment. 

Would things be different if he had never chosen Edelgard? Would they be _better?_ What would have happened if he had chosen Claude or Dimitri instead? 

Had leaving Garreg Mach been a mistake as well? 

After the war, he had been so tired of all the secrets. And with Jeralt dead, only Rhea had been left to answer his questions. 

When they finally found Rhea in the imperial palace’s dungeons, she had all but collapsed into his arms, so pale, so thin, looking more like a waif than the archbishop he remembered and whimpering something incoherent about “blood,” “magic,” and “crests.” She had been so weak he’d had to carry her from the palace. He still remembered nearly dropping her out of surprise when she wrapped her slender arms around his neck, buried her face into his tunic, and sighed deeply, almost like a child would. Later, during one of her lucid moments, she had told them that Hubert and a cabal of dark mages had been taking her blood and experimenting with it. She said her blood sometimes felt like it was boiling in her veins and it was driving her mad. She did nothing but sleep for days when they finally returned to Garreg Mach, waking only for short intervals and showing no noticeable improvement in condition. 

Seteth had locked her away in her quarters on the third floor and refused to let anyone see her but Cyril and himself, saying she was very ill, that it was too dangerous. And every time Byleth broached the subject of learning the truth — about himself, about Jeralt, about Sothis and the church, about _everything_ — he was shut down with more of the same. 

“I am sorry, but what Rhea needs now is _rest,_ not an interrogation,” Seteth had told him outside of Rhea’s chambers, looking worn and sallow-faced, little more than a shadow of his former self. “Please, Byleth, try to understand. I know how eager you are to know the truth, but she is not behaving like herself. You can ask her these questions once she has recovered. For now, I must ask that you have patience.” 

He secretly wondered if this had anything to do with her transformation into a dragon during Edelgard’s initial invasion. Flayn at least had been sympathetic, keeping him company while he fished and waited. “My brother is simply being overprotective, Professor,” she had told him while dangling her legs over the edge of the pier. “Truly, I cannot blame him as it is to be expected. Rhea is like family to the two of us. And you . . . well. She is gravely ill.” With a short cough, she trailed off, returning her attention to his fishing line bobbing in the water. 

With Flayn by his side, offering tight-lipped and sometimes cryptic explanations, he waited. He waited one month, then two, and a third, but Rhea never recovered. The entire monastery began to speculate about her feverish ramblings and cries for her mother as well as the bizarre behavior of some members of the church, undergoing abrupt personality changes and forgetfulness. If anything, Rhea grew worse, and _still_ no one would tell him a thing. Not even Seteth, who refused to part with secrets that were not his to reveal. By then Byleth decided he’d had more than enough. He left the Sword of the Creator lying on the bed in his room one day and said goodbye to Flayn, Alois, and his Black Eagles that remained. Then he left the monastery and never returned. 

Not long after, he heard a string of troubling rumors while traveling that Rhea had died, there had been some kind of deadly illness amongst the church’s highest-ranking members, and Seteth had assumed the position of archbishop himself. It made no difference to Byleth. He certainly hadn’t wanted the responsibility of being archbishop, rife with all the things he and Jeralt had hated — the self-righteous pomp, the rigid ceremony, the intricate dogma — so he’d had no intention of returning. What could an ex-mercenary like him, totally ignorant of the Church of Seiros’s teachings, really offer them anyway? He hadn’t wanted to teach again, either. When he left, the monastery had been filled with so many ghosts, and everywhere he looked he saw another reminder of someone they had lost. In the kitchens, in the dining hall, in the dormitories, in the gardens, in the classroom, in the library, in the marketplace, on the training grounds, and even on the little pier that pushed out into the pond. 

It would have been hard to stay. Even for him. 

Tonight, the Jeralt Company was camped just upriver of a battlefield they had passed earlier in the day. If the wind hit just right, they could even smell it from their camp: the coppery scent of old blood as well as singed hair and rotting flesh left to bake in the sun for too long. It wouldn’t be long now before the smell attracted wild wyverns and other large scavengers. It had looked recent when they passed it by, so Byleth himself had searched it for survivors. The skirmish hadn’t been too large, maybe fifty combatants total based upon the number of bodies left behind, and he’d recognized the opposing colors of House Bergliez and House Hevring on the ragged banners left behind in the mud. The sight had stirred something in him, memories of better days, before he grimaced and turned away from the carnage, shoving those unwanted thoughts aside. 

If there were any survivors, they hadn’t stuck around for long. 

Byleth wasn’t surprised. Within Adrestia’s old borders, it wasn’t too unusual to come across small skirmishes such as this one. House Hevring, with House Arundel’s assistance, was probably testing House Bergliez, which was one of the best suited houses to rule now and the most eager to see the empire restored, having already annexed House Hyrm’s, House Varley’s, and House Aegir’s territories. Last he’d heard, Bergliez was even starting to apply pressure on the dying House Ordelia and House Gloucester while Holst remained as fixated as ever on defending against both Almyra in the east and the aggressively-expanding kingdom to the west, led by Crown Prince Martin Mateus. 

His face flushed and feeling uncomfortably warm, Byleth yelled a greeting to whoever was on guard duty before he slipped back into camp and slowly made his rounds for the night, telling each of his people to sleep well and wake at dawn because he wanted to make an early start tomorrow for the Great Bridge of Myrrdin. Some faces, he noticed, showed disappointment at hearing that but most simply nodded. It was well known within the Company that their boss didn’t like working for the warring lords and only took their contracts when he had to. They knew he preferred contracts for bandits and monsters, but that didn’t mean everyone approved. 

Eventually, Byleth returned to his tent and made sure the flap was tied closed behind him in spite of the heat. It was only then, safe within the relative privacy of his tent, that he finally allowed himself to think about what he had been repressing all afternoon and evening. He thought about the two banners lying in the mud, about Caspar and Linhardt, remembering them as he had first met them — one so enthusiastic and the other so lethargic. Despite being friends, they had been each other’s polar opposite in so many ways. Like two sides of the same coin. 

He hadn’t known them well. In truth, he hadn’t known any of his students well. All but coerced into teaching despite inheriting Jeralt’s distaste for “spoiled brats,” Byleth had kept what he believed to be an appropriate distance. That had been a mistake, in retrospect. Maybe if he had gotten closer, known them better, then Edelgard— 

Byleth cut off the thought abruptly and took a deep breath as the hollowness in his chest throbbed. His students _had_ grown on him eventually, but by then it had been too late. 

Some time after the Reunification War ended, he’d heard that Caspar had died in battle trying to realize his father’s dream of a reunited empire, and now House Bergliez was being led by his older brother. He didn’t know what happened to Linhardt. He could be dead or disinherited, and neither would surprise Byleth. 

His mouth twisted. He’d hoped for a better future. For them and for himself. 

Slowly, Byleth peeled off his cloak and armor, stripping all the way down to his sweat-soaked small-clothes. He removed the wooden charm, which Jeralt had carved for him when he was deemed old enough to start joining his father on missions, from his belt and left it lying on his neatly-folded cloak before he crawled onto his bedroll. He lay on his back, staring into the dark and wondering which would be worse tonight: His thoughts or his dreams. So far, his thoughts appeared to be winning. 

His fingers fumbled for the ring that hung on a silver chain around his neck, and he turned that over, rolling it between his fingers. The feel of the cold, polished metal, and the familiar shape, was oddly soothing. It reminded him of Jeralt. Strong and stoic, a man of few words. More distantly, it reminded him of a mother he had never known, a woman whose only legacy was a name on a gravestone at Garreg Mach. 

Inexplicably, his thoughts returned to his students. Their smiling faces arranged in a half-circle around him as Edelgard presented to him a pendant engraved with the symbol of their house— 

_I failed them,_ he thought suddenly. _I failed them all._

The hollowness in his chest throbbed again, this time more intensely, and he wondered if that was Sothis’s way of agreeing. He could only imagine what she would have to say about the sorry state of Fódlan now. 

Later, long after the war, he had tried digging up what happened to everyone. Ferdinand, he’d learned, had tried to return to House Aegir’s territory and been put to death by a mob of imperial loyalists. Bernie and Dorothea had both disappeared, never to be seen again. Petra had returned to Brigid and eventually inherited its crown from her grandfather. When the Adrestian nobles began turning on one another, she declared Brigid’s independence from Fódlan and closed off the archipelago’s ports to the mainland. 

Catherine and Alois were still Knights of Seiros, he’d heard. He didn’t know what happened to Shamir or Cyril. He didn’t know what happened to the Ashen Wolves either. They could still be in Abyss for all he knew. 

Ashe had fallen in the Valley of Torment. Then Lorenz died defending the Great Bridge of Myrrdin. The rest of the Blue Lion and Golden Deer students had died with Dimitri and Claude on Gronder Field all those years ago. Gilbert too. Hubert had died during their assault on Enbarr, and Dedue had vanished not long after the confrontation in the throne room. And Edelgard . . . 

Edelgard he had failed most of all. He didn’t like thinking about her. She was little more than the hated villain in the tales now — an embodiment of pure, unrepentant evil used to frighten children — and maybe she did deserve that epithet for everything she had done. For plunging Fódlan into the flames of war, for killing her classmates, for what she and Hubert had done to Rhea. It would have been easier if he too saw her that way, if he could hate her for it all. He remembered how hard and pitiless her expression had been when she gave the order to kill them all in the Holy Tomb. But he also remembered a very different Edelgard: the dutiful house leader who had helped him adjust to life at the monastery, who had assisted him with the planning for their monthly missions, who had always been the first to class and the last to leave, who had hunted down (or sent Hubert to find) Linhardt, Bernadetta, and even Caspar on occasion just to make sure _they_ made it to class on time, who had kept her expression so carefully guarded around others but whose pale eyes had held the most profound sadness in them when she thought she was alone. He had never asked her why. Maybe she had known then what she would eventually become, what she would be remembered as: The warmonger, the traitor, the heretic, the monster. She must have believed it would be a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve her ambitions. _She must have,_ he thought. The Edelgard he knew had been nothing short of prudent. She would have never done it otherwise. 

In many ways, she had been a mystery to him. He didn’t pretend to understand why she had done what she did, only that she believed the Church of Seiros was corrupt and had been stifling humanity’s progress somehow. He must have spent hours poring over the manifesto she had left behind when she fled the monastery, searching for the truth in her words — how culpable she was for Flayn’s abduction, Remire Village’s destruction, and his own father’s death — and struggling to read between them. In hindsight, she had been dropping hints like breadcrumbs for him to follow, but he had been too stupid to see, too naïve, too preoccupied with everything else to notice the way her face crumpled when he told her he believed the events were all connected and the Flame Emperor had to be involved in some way. In the end, he still didn’t know which version of her, the Edelgard he had known or her Flame Emperor persona, had been the most authentic, but she had paid for her actions with her life. To hate her _after_ her death seemed excessive. 

Ultimately, they were all either dead, missing, or hopelessly out of his reach. 

In the darkness, Byleth listened to the voices of the other mercenaries as they laughed and talked around the camp fires. A part of him wanted to join them, to put off the inevitable if only for a little while, but he knew his youth, legendary reputation, and lack of emotion tended to make them uncomfortable. They all looked older than him, some even old enough to be his parent or grandparent, with friends and families back at home, and he knew better than to risk getting too attached. Sometimes it was a struggle just to remember their names. They were a loyal enough bunch though, as well as friendly, and that was all he asked. 

He turned over on his bedroll and wondered if he would dream tonight. Would he see Dimitri’s ghost again — lost, alone, and so full of regret? Or would he see Edelgard? She was the one his dreams always seemed to return to, in the end. Kneeling on a crimson carpet flecked with blood, her head bowed to him, with loose strands of silver hand cascading down around her face, as if she was about to be coronated. Her crown of bone and blood sat heavy in his hands, and his eyes burned, just like they had when Jeralt died. _She betrayed us,_ he’d had to remind himself. _She betrayed me._

His thoughts veered again, back to the smiling girl with purple ribbons in her hair holding out a pendant towards him, and he remembered his surprise, thinking: _For once, her smile almost seems genuine._ Again, he picked at the hollowness in his chest. 

_Happy Birthday,_ he thought to himself before he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Words no one has said to him in decades. 

Without thinking, his mind went to the dagger he kept underneath his pillow, and he wondered if it was finally time. He didn’t have to see them if he didn’t want to. It could be his final gift, even better than the Black Eagles’ pendant, which he had thrown into the pond after the revelation in the Holy Tomb — another regret, in hindsight. His death would be quick. One upwards plunge right beneath the rib cage or one smooth cut across the hollow of his throat. If he kept quiet, no one would even know until morning, and he would be long gone by then. He wasn’t sure if he would live forever, like the tales said, but he didn’t want to find out. Not here and not like this, reliving the same regrets over and over again while growing more and more desperate to forget by the year. 

If this was all he had to look forward to, then fusing with Sothis had been the biggest mistake of all. If given the choice now, he would have happily stayed with her forever in the Darkness of Zahras, where the darkness seemed to stare back and he could not see the ice-cold tendrils that caressed his body like so many clammy fingers. At least she would be there, faintly glowing, the only source of light in the impenetrable blackness, and having her back would be a thousand times better than this. 

He knew she would never approve. She would tear into him, hands on her hips and voice rising shrilly, if only she could hear his thoughts now. And as if to prove his point, the hollowness in his chest throbbed a few times. He thought about the dagger again and frowned, considering. It was one thing to take his own life, but to deprive Fódlan of its Goddess . . . If their souls were truly joined, then what right did he have to end her life as well? Could he even find it within himself to be that selfish? 

Byleth wrapped his hand around his mother’s ring and balled it into a fist. He wished he could go back. At this point, he would give anything for a second chance. If only the Divine Pulse could turn back decades instead of— 

His thoughts stopped abruptly as an idea took root instead. He hadn’t activated the Divine Pulse or even thought about using it in decades. He had only ever used the Pulse to roll back seconds, which may as well be the difference between life and death in combat, and the effort was always taxing. Sothis had always warned him not to push it too far, that it was dangerous. If used too many times in short succession, it would leave him exhausted and vulnerable to enemy attacks. The farthest he had ever gone in time was when Jeralt had died, and it was Sothis who had forcibly stopped him from going any further. 

But if he was to try again, he realized, Sothis could not stop him now. 

He had never given much thought to Sothis’s identity as the Goddess before. She had always just been Sothis to him, his sometimes-annoying friend that shared his thoughts. Maybe it was because she hadn’t acted like a Goddess, or because he had always cared more about a person’s character and ability than their title, but he found himself giving it a thought now. Just how far did her power extend? If pushed, how far could the Divine Pulse go? Back to before he left Garreg Mach? Before the battle on Gronder Field? Before the war even began? Was that even possible? 

Byleth sat up on his bedroll, wide-eyed and cross-legged, still clutching his mother’s ring in his fist. The effort could very well kill him, he thought, considering. More than likely, he would fail to turn back more than a handful of seconds and simply wake up tomorrow feeling exhausted. Or . . . it might just work. Didn’t the risk of reward outweigh the risk of failure? If he could save his Eagles, if he could save the Blue Lions and the Golden Deer too, wasn’t it a risk worth taking? Surely Sothis would understand that. 

Still, he hesitated, lingering on all of the ways it could go wrong. 

Then he thought of Caspar and Linhardt. He thought of Petra, Dorothea, Bernadetta, and even Hubert. He thought of Claude. He thought of Edelgard. He thought of Dimitri. If it worked, he thought, _he could save them all._ Somehow, he would save Fódlan and avert this fate. He would finally be the Goddess-sent hero the tales described. 

After taking a deep breath, Byleth reached into himself, fully grasping the hollow feeling in his chest, and tugged. All at once, reality shattered, and the seconds began to slide by in reverse. He was suddenly a passenger in his own body. He watched as he lay back down on the bedroll and stared into the darkness. He could feel the effort draining him, leeching away at the fringes of his consciousness, but he held firm. He thought again of his students: Linhardt, head nodding, slowly dozing off in class; Caspar, cheerfully digging into a platter piled high with a mountain of sweet buns and beast meats; Petra, aiming her bow at a practice dummy with a look of fierce concentration; Dorothea, smiling so brightly as she danced with him before the White Heron Cup; Bernadetta, offering him a small, tentative smile as she slipped past him into the classroom; Hubert, sullenly glaring at him after being complimented on his excellent spellcraft. 

Just as he began to feel tired and to wonder if there was any point to this after all, something changed. Time seemed to have sped up as seconds blended into minutes and larger chunks of time sailed by. He watched himself quickly get out of bed, dress himself, and exit the tent. Tiredness began to broach into a tight pressure building in his head, right between his eyes, a subtle pain almost like the onset of a migraine. He continued to hold it, despite the pressure. Despite the pain. He would endure. He thought about Edelgard — older and more refined — in her full war regalia, and how her carefully guarded expression had cracked ever so slightly in the Goddess Tower when she recognized him coming up the stairs after being missing in action for years, changing so quickly he might have missed it if he’d blinked. Surprise. Warmth. Relief. Then she recovered and her walls went back up, her expression turning cold and cautious once more. 

He watched himself make his nightly rounds, starting backwards. The pain grew from a dull ache to a full-on, stabbing pain. His vision began to distort and darken, his grip loosening slightly on the Pulse, but still he held firm. He thought of Dimitri, pale and gaunt, his blond hair greasy and unkempt, hanging in long and limp strands around his haggard face. His sunken, pale blue eyes had been haunting, so empty and filled with regret, as if begging to be saved. It almost hurt to see. As a student, he had always been so kind and polite. 

If this worked, he resolved suddenly through the pain, he would save Dimitri. They could find a way to stop Edelgard _together_ — 

The minutes lengthened to hours, and then he saw only flashes of the day’s events: having a few ales at the inn, making camp for the night, investigating the skirmish. The pain became agonizing, like white-hot rods jammed into his eye sockets. He wanted to scream. A primitive part of him desperately wanted to let go, to escape the pain. It told him that he would die if he didn’t, and soon he even began to believe it. His grip slipped again, and this time he did let go, releasing the Divine Pulse. 

But to his horror, _it just kept going,_ as if another was holding the Pulse now. Reality did not reconstruct itself and grind to a halt. Time continued to fly by in bits and pieces, and he tried to dig into the hollowness again, to stop it, but there was nothing to grab onto now. It had taken on a life of its own. The wheel was spinning, and he could not stop it, could no sooner stop it than he could bring Sothis back. He begged for the pain to stop, despite believing deep down Sothis would not, could hear. 

Hours stretched into days, and he saw only the briefest flickers of distorted images that made little sense without context. He could only recognize a few things as his vision faded in and out: a sword in his hand, a horse underneath him, a vaguely familiar face, a crackling fire. He no longer knew where or even _when_ he was. He screamed. He could not think or do anything _but_ scream. He wanted the dagger; he wanted to die. Days became weeks, and Byleth could take it no longer. He felt exhausted, like his blood was boiling in his veins, like his entire body was on fire, like he had been flayed alive. 

His very identity was being burnt away. His thoughts, his feelings, his memories. Pain was all he was. Pain was all he knew. Eventually, he passed out and knew no more. 

  


* * *

  


When he awoke, he found himself lying in a relatively empty room with two beds. It looked like it could have been a private room at an inn, but without any distinguishing features beyond rustic charm, it may as well have been _any_ village inn. His vision bucked and swam, and he felt so exhausted that he could probably sleep for days. He sat up slowly. The hollowness in his chest was gone, replaced by a familiar warmth, and he felt so strange. He lifted his hands in front of his face, clenching and unclenching his fingers, and watched them move in fascination. Remarkably, there was no pain. 

He remembered using the Divine Pulse, and he remembered sheer, mind-numbing pain but not much else. His memories were hazy and indistinct. How far had he gone back? Where was he? When was he? 

_“Honestly!_ What were you hoping to accomplish with _that_ little stunt!?” 

Hearing that, his head jerked upwards, and his breath caught in his throat. But Sothis was there, sitting on the ceiling above his head like it was the most natural thing in the world. She glared at him and bit her cheek, her hands placed on her hips. The warmth in his chest swelled, and his lips pulled apart in a small, exhausted smile. 

“I do hope you are pleased with yourself,” she said, sounding sullen as she floated down to eye-level. Then, stretching like a cat, she yawned. “Now I feel . . . so _tired_. . . .” 

“It worked,” he whispered hoarsely. If she wasn’t floating just out of his reach, or he felt less spent, he would have leapt out of bed and pulled her into a hug. 

“Yes, yes. You really _are_ a boulder, aren’t you?” she sighed. “This is entirely your fault, you know. Did you go and forget _everything_ I told you?” she asked, her voice rising dangerously, green eyes narrowing, still biting the inside of her cheek as she gestured wildly. “I never intended for you to take the Divine Pulse back so far! You could have died! _I_ could have died! And then where would any of us be?” 

Her face softened as she allowed herself one watery smile, but the concern in her eyes stayed. “Oh, little one,” she said softly, “I am so very happy to see you again, but . . . _what have you done?”_

Byleth was just about to open his mouth to answer when Jeralt walked into the room. “Oh, good,” he said, sounding relieved. “You’re already awake.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this was my attempt to differentiate the Silver Snow ending from Verdant Wind. I did make it the undeniably "bad" ending. This chapter is kind of meta if you consider the TH fandom at large but I genuinely enjoyed writing this one. Please, let me know if anything is confusing because the rest of the story does sort of depend upon this "NewGame+" ability making sense. Also, be sure to leave a kudos or comment to let me know that I'm not just writing this for myself to enjoy lol. A comment is as good as gold to me. 
> 
> Also, if you're interested, my other FE fic "Ends" acts as an angsty prequel of sorts to this one.
> 
> TL:DR Byleth finishes the Silver Snow route but doesn't enjoy it because everyone dies, he doesn't get any answers from Rhea, and Fódlan breaks down between various feuding war lords without Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and Rhea to keep things together. Without Sothis to stop him, he uses the Divine Pulse to go back in time as far as he can - only to pass out and wake up in Remire Village once again.


	2. Feel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: violent images; character death; spoilers for Crimson Flower.
> 
> Chapter Tags: canon-divergent; post-canon; action/adventure; angst; stream of consciousness; exposition; character study; "NewGame+"; "meddling with time has subtle consequences"; M!Byleth; Edelgard von Hresvelg; I am Ferdinand von Aegir; Dorothea Arnault; Linhardt von Hevring; Lysithea von Ordelia; Shamir Nevrand; Gilbert Pronislav; Bernadetta von Varley; Cyril; Rhea; Immaculate One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter, as promised! (And just in time for Edelgard's birthday!) This is just a heads-up, but I went back and fixed a few issues/typos I noticed in the prologue. Nothing major. Gave Flayn some dialogue. It's been awhile since I played Silver Snow, and sadly I forgot a few things. Everything else is intentional. I will probably tweak this chapter too at some point because of a few issues I had while writing. 
> 
> You know, I was recently inspired to re-play Bioshock: Infinite and Dark Souls for some reason, and I kind of like the direction this series is now taking...
> 
> If you like this story and you like music, I highly recommend "No Fate Awaits Me" by Son Lux ft. Faux Fix, "Let It Burn" by RED, and "After My Fate" by Jean-Pierre Taïeb ft. Kafkaz.

# Chapter Two:

#  ~~(To)~~ Feel

_Byleth did not, in fact, stop at a second chance. He did not even stop at a third. Some events were always preordained to happen, he came to learn, no matter how hard he tries to stop them and no matter whose house he chooses to teach. Not even Dimitri's raw strength or Claude's cleverness could help him avoid certain fates. Other times his meddling has worse consequences than if he had done nothing at all._

_Rhea, smiling and serene, always gives him the first pick of the three houses._

_Hubert and Edelgard are always unnaturally skilled at detecting when he is sleuthing nearby._

_Despite having the Divine Pulse at his disposal, time itself is ironically his greatest obstacle. He simply never has enough of it to earn the trust of the house leaders he didn't choose._

_He keeps his eyes and ears open during what little free time he has when he isn't training, teaching, planning lessons, or bonding with his students, but neither Solon nor Kronya give him any evidence of their identities or wrong-doing to take to Rhea and Seteth before it's too late. Jeritza is easier to shadow but flees from the monastery at the first sign he has been compromised, which in turn causes the rest of the monastery's schemers to grow even more paranoid and tight-lipped._

_Whether it's been Kronya's knife, in the line of duty half a continent away, or a drawn-out illness that may be the result of poison, Jeralt always dies._

_Edelgard always springs her trap in the Holy Tomb. Once as herself and twice as her Flame Emperor persona, it is only her mask that differs._

_He is always thrown, kicking and clawing, over the ramparts and into the abyss below the monastery. He never remembers hitting the bottom or the five years lost to a mysterious slumber._

_Edelgard always dies, and the war always ends with her death._

_The hollowness in his chest always stays, and it only worsens as he outlives his students and colleagues._

_By the end of his third "life," he held the last two hard-earned lessons closest to his chest. So, for his fourth reincarnation, determined to find a way to save her and Hubert too, Byleth does what he never thought he would: He chooses Edelgard again. He stops trying to save Jeralt. And in the Holy Tomb, he chooses her for a third time._

* * *

30 Great Tree Moon, Imperial Year 1186

When their army finally reached Fhirdiad and they saw at last what Rhea had in store for the Kingdom's capital, Byleth expected to feel _something_.

He had expected to feel rage, revulsion, resolve, regret — the gamut of emotions he now saw displayed on the faces of the Black Eagle Strike Force's members. Anything but the apathy he had grown accustomed to, after reliving this war four times. In truth, he would have settled for feeling even one, but it seemed like he was destined for disappointment. All he felt was the stillness in his chest, the warmth from the flames, and the smoke in his eyes, filling his lungs, and so he unleashed his frustrations the only way he knew how — as the Ashen Demon, with every flick of his wrist, every flash of steel, and every snap of bone beneath his gauntlet.

It had been a lifetime or two, but his memories of Fhirdiad returned to him slowly, like grains of sand through a closed fist. He remembered the welcoming banners waving from the tops of buildings all over the city, only now those same blue banners were burning, and the silver griffin knight was engulfed in flames. He recognized Fhirdiad's school of sorcery and its sparse gardens where he had often visited an older Annette after she became an instructor there. If he looked to his left, he half-expected to find Dedue standing beside him, as immovable as a steel wall and waiting for further instructions with his usual stoicism. Every figure he saw in the distance, obscured by fire and smoke, was Dimitri fiercely cutting a path to his side with Areadbhar, and Byleth had to shake his head to dispel the ghosts. Dimitri and Dedue were dead, he told himself as an arrow whistled by his head and a cursing Knight of Seiros stumbled out from the thick, billowing cloud of cinders. This time, he had chosen Edelgard.

He ran towards the knight. He gripped the Sword of the Creator's hilt more firmly in his hands but froze in his tracks once he was close enough to see a snarling face and an icy blue eye filled with unbridled hatred across the hellscape—

He shook his head again. He had chosen Edelgard, and this time he was resolved to see her path through to the end. Maybe then, he thought, he could finally find the fulfillment he sought and put an end to this vicious cycle. Maybe, he told himself, the hollowness in his chest would not be so unbearable this time around. It was wishful thinking at best; by his own definition, this life was already a failure, and even if they did manage to win the war, he knew the loneliness would only grow worse with time as his Eagles began passing away from natural causes. He could only save them for so long. Decades would pass until, once again, he was alone. Still, he had to try.

The knight deftly plucked an arrow from the quiver hanging at his side and raised his bow again, intending to take full advantage of Byleth's hesitation. Byleth stiffened, preparing to lunge . . . then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Caspar was there, emerging from the haze, his axe raised overhead. He cut down the sniper with an enthusiastic war cry before sending his professor a weirded-out look.

Byleth's mouth twisted, and his grip on his sword loosened. He would have preferred a battlefield with fewer ghosts. Or perhaps a part of him was still reeling from the battle on the Tailtean Plains, which had been a painful enough experience on its own. It wasn't like him at all to be so distracted, especially not in combat, and he knew the others were starting to notice. He could feel their concerned eyes on his back every time he gave the order to advance or failed to take action.

Normally, his mind was sharp, his focus unparalleled, and he preferred it that way. It made battle easier, reducing it to a series of calculated risks over knee-jerk reactions. He could objectively evaluate his Eagles' skills and abilities with confidence rather than worry about placing them in harm's way. And if he found himself mistaken or something unforeseen arose, well, there was always the Divine Pulse to fall back on and use to compensate. It was his greatest weapon, after all. That was ignoring the new nightmare he would have to add to his collection in the nights that followed, of course, but he could deal with those as they came. The ghosts were nothing but a nuisance now.

They fought on, moving farther into the city, keeping to the main streets in order to avoid falling debris and fiery dead ends. The farther in they pressed, the more civilians they passed: panicked men, women, and children clutching rags to their faces as they slogged through the smoke, trying to evacuate with animals, wagons, handcarts, and whatever belongings they could carry. Screams, shouts, and the cries of children were frequently heard over the roar of the flames and splintering of buildings. It reminded Byleth of Remire Village's chaotic destruction, only on a much grander scale. Despite the hateful looks they received, they pointed south, back the way they'd come, and shouted at anyone who would listen that they would find help at the main gate, that they had left the way mostly clear.

Then, when they reached Fhirdiad's main market in the center of the city, all bets were thrown off.

Byleth watched as Edelgard, resplendent in her war regalia, with her shield raised and battalion following, moved up slowly into his field of view to engage an altered golem that was keeping Lysithea, Linhardt, and Dorothea pinned down behind a gutted storefront with heavy-hitting lances of light. Like a badger fighting a bear, Caspar was already throwing taunts, axes, and anything else he could get his hands on at the automaton, trying to divert its attention away from their mages, while Ferdinand and his astral knights circled around on horseback, seeking out gaps in its golden armor with the tips of their lances and spears.

As Edelgard approached, the golem's helmet swiveled towards her, and its glowing red eyes brightened as if in recognition. _"That . . . blood. . . . You . . . dare. . . ."_ it rumbled before making a jerky swipe at her with its oversized lance, which she promptly ducked under but sent half a dozen of the supreme armored corps behind her flying. They were swatted away as easily as insects against a row of stone townhouses and into wooden stalls.

Byleth quickly took advantage of the momentary ceasefire to sprint into the storefront, where he found his three students huddled behind the shop's counter. Linhardt was tenderly healing a mild burn on Lysithea's hand while Dorothea kept a watchful eye on the golem outside. A hissing ball of white sparks sat in the songstress's hand, ready to be hurled.

"Oh, it's just you, Professor," Dorothea sighed, sounding relieved. She leaned back against a half-burnt, smoke-blackened wall as she released her magic, and the lightning in her hand fizzled out. "Thank the Goddess."

He glanced at the golem outside through the shattered storefront window, listening to Caspar's distant shouts of "Hey, Ugly! You call _this_ a fight!? I've fought taller! Look over here!"

"Quickly, you three," Byleth said to them urgently, "let's target the heart while it's distracted. We're going to give it an elemental fusillade."

Dorothea bit her lip but nodded hesitantly.

Flexing her newly-healed fingers, Lysithea gave him a grim half-smile. "You got it, Professor."

Together, the three moved to where the shop's large window had blown out, tentatively stepping over shards of glass and other detritus in the piles of ash until they all had a full, unhampered view of the golem. It was now busy making sweeps at the astral knights by its feet, sending squealing horses and their knights flying, while Edelgard regrouped with the rest of her battalion behind a cluster of stalls.

"Get over here, Linhardt," demanded Lysithea suddenly, her hands on her hips. "Come on, we're going to need your help too."

Byleth turned around and saw that Linhardt was still hesitating by the counter, tugging idly on the long sleeves of his robes. "Just wait a moment," he said, frowning. "Is it wise to unleash a fusillade _here?_ In the center of a city this large? And with who knows how many historical buildings around with civilians trapped inside?"

"At this point, I don't think the city can get much worse," Byleth deadpanned. "Do _you_ have any better ideas?"

"No," Linhardt sighed, "I don't. Ugh, I hate this. I hate everything about this."

Linhardt clambered over to join them at the window. Once Byleth had all three mages by his side, he slipped his sword through the loop of his belt and raised his hands, channeling his magic through a gate. The familiar tingle started in the base of his skull and raced all the way to the tips of his fingers, like liquid fire in his veins. A ball of fire roared to life in the palm of his hand, a far cry from what he'd had to work with lifetimes ago. He had spent an entire lifetime just learning the intricacies of magic so the effort came naturally to him now, almost instinctual, and the more he concentrated, the larger the flame swelled in his hands.

"Ready? On three," he told his Eagles. "One . . . two. . . ."

He glanced at them from the corner of his eye and saw their mirrored expressions of concentration. Spheres of arcing light, rustling wind, and bubbling miasma sat in their hands. He could feel the static energy in the air, strong enough to make his hair stand on end. In that moment, if he could have felt anything at all, he wished it could have been pride.

_". . . three!"_

All at once, Byleth poured as much of himself into the flame as he could, causing it to balloon quickly before he released, sending the horse-sized fireball hurtling towards the automaton. The golem staggered back as it was struck by explosive missiles of fire, lightning, wind, and miasma in quick succession but did not go down. When the smoke and arcing electricity cleared, Byleth saw that their efforts had been successful: The golem's badly-dented breastplate had melted through, leaving the beating mechanical heart underneath exposed and the red-hot, molten metal around it still hissing and dripping.

Seeing that, Byleth confidently stepped through the window and out onto the street. He removed the sword from his belt and lunged. His blood sang as the Sword of the Creator unraveled towards the heart and looped around it. He began to tug on the hilt with both hands but met resistance. By then it was too late; the automaton had already grabbed ahold of the uncoiled blade with its free hand. With a mechanical growl, it pulled him forward and into the air by several meters, jerking the sword right out of his hands and leaving him sprawled out on the ground. He lay still in the street, face down on the flagstones, too stunned to move.

He heard a few frightened cries of _"Professor!"_ and heard an explosive boom followed by the screams of tearing metal. By the time he sat up and looked around, the golem, enveloped in so many dark purple spikes protruding from the inside out, was slowly collapsing. As melted slag, soldered metal, and shredded armor rained down over the marketplace, Caspar, Ferdinand, and the few remaining astral knights scrambled away to get clear of the falling debris. Both Edelgard and Lysithea were hurrying towards him.

It was Edelgard, smiling with relief, who reached him first and offered him a hand up. He accepted, and she easily pulled him to his feet with a lurch. His head began to spin. "Thanks," he said before checking again on the fallen golem. "Excellent work."

Dark purple sparks were still crackling up and down Lysithea's arm as she shook her head at him. Her pink eyes were full of poorly-hidden concern. "For me, that was mere child's play, Professor. But frankly _you_ could have been easily killed just now. Do try to be more careful, won't you?"

Byleth's mouth twisted. "I'll try," he promised, flexing his wrist. He knew she was right. Even he had to admit it had been a close call. If the golem had decided to follow up by immediately discharging another lance of light . . .

Edelgard gave the younger woman beside her a tired smile. "Child's play or not, you did well, Lysithea. I'm impressed."

As another bolt of dark magic raced up her arm, Lysithea beamed up at her friend. "You can count on me, Edelgard. After all, this is what I do."

Just then, they heard the distant, rumbling roar of a dragon. They all looked towards the castle overlooking the city and sobered, already thinking about the difficult fight ahead.

"Good," said Edelgard grimly, voicing their collective thoughts. "This battle is far from over. The hardest part still lies ahead."

As the Black Eagles regrouped, checking in on the dead and the injured, and Byleth went to retrieve his sword from the wreckage, he tried not to think of Edelgard's words from before the battle nor the way she refused to look at him, keeping her expression guarded and her gaze locked on the space between her horse's ears as they followed the marching army's column. _"After Rhea is gone from this world, I don't know what will become of you,"_ she had admitted, her voice low.

Again, by all rights, he thought he should feel _something_ — concern, fear, panic, even surprise because this was not a possibility he had ever considered — but the feelings simply were not there. He was oddly at peace with the idea of ending the archbishop's life and his own in the process. Briefly, he wondered what Sothis would have to say about it. Could someone like him even die? And would it be such a bad thing if he did? The weight of multiple lives and failures was beginning to wear him down.

They kept going, never stopping for long.

With a slow and even horizontal strike, Byleth decapitated a warlock that had been more interesting in swapping spells with Dorothea, weaving in and out of cover as they threw magical bolts at one another, than worrying about her exposed flank. He flinched when he felt the spray of blood across his face. The body dropped like a lead weight at his feet, and Byleth hastily wiped down the bloody Sword of the Creator on the woman's robes before he was already moving again. He looked up and caught Dorothea staring at him, but her expression was frayed and distant.

He scowled as he turned away. Then Byleth watched in silence as Edelgard buffeted an assassin with her shield, knocking him off balance, and swung Aymr, which flashed red as it whirled through the air. It sliced through both of the man's legs just below the knee. The knight screamed as he went down, but it wasn't long before she buried her axe in his throat to silence him. She wrenched the axe away and twirled it, shaking off the blood and gore. With her prodigal strength, she wielded her heavy hero's relic and tower shield as if they were little more than children's toys.

His scowl deepened. Peace, he thought, could not come soon enough.

As the battle progressed, Byleth found himself sinking deeper and deeper into a mental mire of his thoughts and half-remembered memories. The more he struggled against it, the more swiftly he was pulled in.

It was frustrating not to feel the things he knew deep down that he should. It brought to mind all the times he had, as a child, wondered why he couldn't be like the other children he and his encountered on their travels. At first, the feelings had been there, only muted, lurking beneath the surface, but over time, across lifetimes, they had begun to slip farther out of his grasp. Now, he hardly felt at all.

He was _surprised,_ certainly. Though he had never liked the way Rhea looked at him, looked through him, with her knowing eyes and serene smile, he had come close to trust once or twice before. But he never expected the archbishop would go to quite these lengths when he chose to protect Edelgard in the Holy Tomb. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought she would come undone so quickly, so completely, and demand his heart in recompense. While he stood in the tomb between her and Edelgard, the hostility had almost been tangible, practically rolling off her in waves, her glowing green eyes filled with unadulterated wrath.

But then again, he had seen glimpses of this Rhea also — sending students to put down dissenters of the church and using this gruesome exercise as a warning; executing members of the Western Church without a fair trial despite their claim that they had been framed; and covering up the true history of Nemesis, Fódlan's Ten Elites, and what their relics could do in the wrong hands. Byleth had learned from his past lives that she was at least partially responsible for the things Edelgard accused her of. For centuries, Rhea had stood by and perpetuated the lie that the crests were gifts from the Goddess when the truth was so plain to see. All she'd had to do was step outside and ask any of the student at the Officers' Academy how they had benefited from having a crest.

But most of all, he had seen Rhea's true self in her snarling face as she demanded he execute Edelgard — his own student and, not knowing about her secret coronation, the heir apparent of the Adrestian Empire — without question, without trial, and without mercy. He had hesitated the first time it happened, unwilling to kill Edelgard without knowing more about her motives, and he wondered for so long if that had been a mistake. Hesitating only seemed to give her and Hubert time to teleport away. Even then Rhea hadn't been happy with his failure to act. This time, however, her eyes had narrowed to reptilian slits when he stepped in to shield Edelgard from her gaze, her voice deepening to such a low growl that he remembered thinking it could not possibly be coming from the soft-spoken archbishop.

The answers were still so fresh in his mind, answers that Claude had helped pry from the grasps of a grateful Seteth and Rhea after she was rescued from Enbarr. Byleth could tell the crafty schemer was growing frustrated with their secretive natures, as frustrated as Byleth himself had felt. Together, they had spent so many evenings pulling books out of the library in Abyss and setting up their base of operations in the monastery's library just so they could piece together the truth. The saints, the crests, the Immaculate One, Edelgard's war, and Those Who Slither in the Dark. It all had to be connected.

Somehow, with his silver tongue, Claude had been able to coerce the answers Byleth alone had been unable to, put off by Rhea's illness and Seteth's stubbornness. Byleth still remembered Claude's expression after hearing Rhea's confession, how his face had seemed to harden and he had pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. He had shaken his head, letting his curly, dark-brown hair fall around his angular face as he gripped the stone parapet and looked out over the monastery. He had looked disturbed enough for the two of them.

 _"Riiight, that sounds—"_ He shook his head again. _"You_ do _realize how this sounds, yeah? You mean to tell us that Teach here is the Goddess's vessel? And you wanted him to be . . . what,_ possessed?"

His green eyes had darted back and forth between the archbishop and his professor, searching for hidden truths in their body language, for once rendered close to complete speechlessness. Byleth had understood the feeling well. The truth at last about Nemesis, the relics' origins, and the admittance that everything Rhea had done had been in the heartfelt hope that he would one day become Sothis herself. The thought made his skin crawl. But _how_ —

_"Byleth!"_

Edelgard's shout jarred Byleth out of his thoughts just in time for him to roll out of the way of a mounted knight's axe. With a flick of his wrist, the Sword of the Creator uncoiled at his feet. But as the great knight circled back around for a second charge, another flew by Byleth in a blur of red, blue, and orange.

"Teacher! Leave this to me!" cried Ferdinand as he leveled his Lampos shield and his spear at the great knight, and the two faced off, their horses pawing eagerly at the earth.

 _"Heretics and traitors,"_ spat the knight, but his words were muffled by his steel helmet. "We'll never let you reach Lady Rhea!" As the knight kicked his horse into a gallop, Ferdinand spurred his into action as well. The ground nearby quaked from their thunderous hooves. Seconds before man and beast were to clash together, the Aegir scion threw back his arm and launched his spear at his opponent. It struck the great knight's shoulder with enough force to shatter bone and knock him clean off his horse, which kicked up clods of dirt as it ran away in terror farther into the burning city. Its rider was left coughing and moaning in the street, the spear's shaft protruding from his shoulder into the air, and Ferdinand snatched it up as he trotted by.

"That was quite the victory," he remarked cheerfully, looking pointedly at Edelgard while his mare tossed its head. The tip of his spear shone bright red. "Wouldn't you agree, Professor? I dare say you will owe me a rather sizeable debt when this is over."

Edelgard shot him an exasperated look before she turned back to Byleth, her brow furrowed in concern. "As much as I hate to admit it, he's right. My teacher, we cannot afford to be so—"

The Sword of the Creator retracted with a second flick of his wrist. _I know,_ he wanted to say, his mouth twisting. _Believe me, I know._

He nodded quickly and tried to give her a look that conveyed he understood. "Thank you, Ferdinand. We can talk later. I think I can almost see the castle gates," he told them and then made a fist in the air. "Advance!"

When they found Gilbert fighting through the city streets with a battalion of Kingdom knights on his heel and a torch in his hand, Byleth wanted to feel regret. Instead, he felt nothing as Gilbert threw down his torch onto the cobblestone street and stomped out the embers with his steel-toed boot. The knight's face was as dark and impassive as a cliff-side. "I am sorry, Dimitri. Annette . . . Goddess forgive us all," he said, grimacing.

"Listen to me, Gilbert!" Byleth shouted at him as he pushed through his Eagles to stand next to Edelgard. Across from them, the row of knights behind Gilbert may as well have been statues carved from stone, revealing nothing through the slits in their helmets. "That goes for the rest of you as well. Lay down your weapons and surrender! You will need to answer for your crimes here today, but we swear you shall be dealt with justly."

"It's true," Edelgard added, lowering Aymr. "As Emperor of Adrestia, I give you my word."

Byleth's grip on his sword tightened. _Please, please, think of Annette if not yourself. Think of your soldiers._

Gilbert's eyes hardened like ice. _"Never._ What does justice and honor mean to a snake like you? You _murdered_ our king. Your words are as meaningless as the wind. No, we were born to be knights of Faerghus, and we shall _die_ as knights of Faerghus," he growled as he lowered his tower shield towards them and gave his knights the signal to charge. "For King Dimitri! For Faerghus!"

Byleth's mouth twisted. In another life, he remembered distantly, Gilbert — no, _Gustave_ — had used that same shield to protect him and Dimitri from volleys of imperial arrows. Then the knights were upon them, and both sides came together with a collective war-cry. As Byleth blocked a knight's axe and twisted out of the way of a powerful follow-up swing, he saw Caspar body-check another out of the corner of his eye. There were flashes of Aymr's telltale glow through the sea of thrashing bodies. Ferdinand's mare reared up onto her hind legs with a squeal and brought her front hooves down hard upon a hapless knight.

Ultimately, the Kingdom knights could not withstand a sustained Black Eagle assault, and no amount of armor could spare Gustave himself from Thrysus. It took only a matter of seconds before Lysithea stood triumphant over the old knight, the tip of her hero's relic dancing and crackling with dark energy. Soon, the battlefield was awash with the putrid scent of rot and decay, the aftermath of her poisonous miasma.

Byleth struggled not to gag, but it was an issue only Dorothea and Linhardt seemed to share. He briefly considered using the Divine Pulse to try to knock out Gustave instead, but there was no telling how he could even reach the man in such a hectic skirmish.

Regret would have been a more than appropriate feeling, thought Byleth as his Eagles dealt with the remaining survivors. Regret that he had been unable to find the right words to convince Gilbert and Catherine to join Edelgard or flee, to look past their chivalric ideals of loyalty and honor for what was the most prudent. Regret that they were Faerghus knights through to their cores, all too eager to follow their lieges blindly into a wall of sharpened steel without regard for their own lives.

At least he had anticipated this fight and left Annette behind to help evacuate civilians. If anything, he should feel glad that she had been spared seeing her father end like this.

They carried on, even farther into the city despite their exhaustion, and eventually reunited with the second group of the advancing Strike Force. Ashe, Shamir, Hubert, Petra, Bernadetta, and Jeritza came barreling out of a burning alley through a cloud of cinders, with handkerchiefs, hoods, and scraps of cloth pulled over their faces as they choked on the smoke. Jeritza and Hubert were both on foot, dragging along their frenzied black horses behind them, whose eyes were rolling with fright. They were smoke-blackened and singed, Byleth saw, but otherwise unharmed. A familiar hero's relic with prongs was strapped to Ashe's back, but it was distinctly dark now.

Shamir followed Byleth's eyes with her own. "Catherine's dead," she told him and refused to say more. Ashe's expression was hard, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Dribbles of blood began to trail from his nose, but the former Blue Lion quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of his blue gambeson.

Byleth looked at them all and nodded heavily. There was nothing else he _could_ say. Before them loomed Fhirdiad's cliffside castle in full view through the smoke, and they could all see the monstrous white beast, towering over the nearby buildings, that awaited them in front of it. Firelight flickered off iridescent scales as the Immaculate One spat blue flames at the castle's lowermost gates and barbicans. As they neared, a wyvern rider broke away from the beast, flying swiftly on course to intercept them.

"Forward position, Edelgard," said Byleth sharply as he took cover behind a stone wall. "Defend Bernadetta. Everyone else, take cover."

Edelgard lifted her tower shield, proudly emblazoned with the two-headed eagle of Adrestia, and stepped in front of Bernie. The last surviving members of her supreme armored corps joined her, lining up their shields to form a wall, while everyone else scrambled for cover behind walls, inside a stone arcade, and in the burnt-out shells of buildings.

Almyran-styled arrows began to sprout like Constance's enchanted flowers around their feet and rebounded off their shields and armor with a sound reminiscent of hail. Then, without warning, the barrage of arrows stopped as the archer urged his wyvern to swoop closer for a better vantage.

"Now, Bernie!" ordered Byleth.

In one fluid motion, Bernie stepped out from behind Edelgard, pulled back on her bowstring, and let fly two arrows, one immediately after the other, with a choked cry of _"I'm so sorry!"_ The wyvern dipped and swerved too late. At least one of the arrows must have found its mark because the wyvern fell into a death spiral, separating into two distinct bodies before they both crashed through the roof of a building with a sickening crash some distance away.

Byleth cringed and took a shaky breath as he plucked one of the broken arrows from the ground. The shaft had been carefully painted with thin green, black, red, and gold bands. Long ago, Claude had laughed and told him they were Almyran good luck charms used to inspire such things as a swift victory and courage in battle. He tossed the arrow away.

 _No, I'm sorry,_ he thought. Cyril had been too young and deserved better. After getting to know the lad, it seemed like convincing him to leave Rhea would be an impossible task, but next time he could—

Byleth shook his head. _Next time,_ he thought again. Already he was thinking about next time, about how he could save those he had already failed. Fódlan might be better off without this version of Rhea, but the others . . . The others he could still save. He was sure of it. The more people he saved, the more he could change. Every time he woke up again in Remire Village, he got closer with the students, knights, and faculty of Garreg Mach, and he had grown to care about them all so much. He would not stop until he found a way they could all witness the end of the war together.

Looking ahead, all they could see was the rampaging Immaculate One.

"Edelgard, Ferdinand, Caspar, Jeritza, with me," he said to his Eagles as they regrouped, and he gave the Sword of the Creator a practice swing. "The rest of you, stay back. Fight where it's safe and don't take any chances. If there are reinforcements, divert them away from us until we've dealt with Rhea."

There was a chorus of agreements and nodding heads as they checked their weapons and tried in vain to wipe away the smeared soot and blood on their faces. He glanced at Edelgard, but her gaze was staunchly fixed on the Immaculate One and the battle ahead. Just like always.

Then Byleth gave the order to attack, they ran up into the square in front of the castle's gate, and they unleashed everything they had upon Rhea's inhuman form. Swords, axes, lances, arrows, scythes, magic, and Caspar even tried to _punch_ the armored hide once or twice. Rhea tore through their gambits, eliminating what remained of the astral knights and supreme armored corps with blasts of blue fire. Jeritza smacked away a massive, whip-like tail with the Scythe of Sariel. Byleth dodged wide, sweeping talons as he raced under the dragon's underbelly to attack its legs.

 _"I . . . will have. . . . all of your hearts!"_ snarled Rhea in her rumbling, terrible voice. _"I will . . . tear them. . . . from your chests!"_

Gradually, they began to wear her down. Enemy reinforcements must have broken through their own army's western front at some point because Byleth heard Dorothea and Hubert shouting as they withdrew, and he gestured wildly for Caspar, Ferdinand, Petra, and everyone else to follow, leaving just Edelgard and himself to finish off the greatly-weakened Immaculate One.

 _"Give it back!"_ growled Rhea, head lowered and her body heaving as she unfurled her wings, buffeting them with waves of air.

"When humanity stands strong, and people reach out for each other," Edelgard said, "there's no need for gods. Rhea, your reign of tyranny is over. The time has come. I'm ending this once and for all!"

Their chests heaving, Byleth and Edelgard exchanged looks of resolve before they ran full-speed towards the beast with the glowing hero's relics in their hands. They leapt together with dual war cries, and their weapons came crashing down upon Rhea's skull with enough force to split it open.

They stood apart after they landed. As Rhea collapsed and breathed her last, shuddering breath, a bubbling green ooze pooling around her head, Byleth wanted to feel _relief_. Instead, he felt something break inside his chest, the Sword of the Creator slip from his grasp, and the ground give way beneath his feet. He face-planted into the ground, his strength leaving him as suddenly as a marionette with its strings cut. Amid the roar of the flames and the distant sounds of battle, he thought he heard someone cry out his name, and for one long, drawn-out moment, he had a partial view of the King's Right Hand and the flame-kissed night sky through a break in the sea of smoke.

 _Is this it?_ he wondered idly. _Is this what it feels like to die?_

It was a novel feeling if nothing else. He had sent so many to their deaths across his lifetimes, both friends and enemies. He had no idea what awaited him beyond. Not even a lifetime spent as archbishop of the Church of Seiros had prepared him for this moment. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would simply wake up once more in Remire Village, and Sothis would be there to greet him as always. Then he could try again, armed with new knowledge to sway Gilbert, Catherine, Cyril, and Dedue. Maybe one day he could save Rhea and Dimitri as well.

His mind raced with so many questions. Would he be taken to Sothis's side, as it was said? Would he see Jeralt again? Would he finally meet his mother, Sitri? Would his Dimitri and Dedue be there as well, waiting for him with warm smiles and open arms? Or would he find the King of Delusion instead, pacing angrily like a caged lion and gnashing his teeth, raging at him for his unforgiveable betrayal? Gilbert, Catherine, and Cyril . . . Would they know what he had done for them lifetimes ago? How many times he had tried to save them too? Would they even remember the times he had chosen them?

Sothis's words from lifetimes ago haunted him now. Was this fate too? Maybe he did deserve to die this time for killing Rhea, for destroying the church, for helping Edelgard set Fódlan aflame. But when so many paths led to Edelgard's death, it seemed cruel that choosing her would inevitably end in his own. Could he not save her and himself both? For so long he had wondered if it was possible to save her, had killed her with his own hands so many times . . . He didn't have the heart to do it again, to face the unnatural emptiness her death left in his chest. It almost seemed fitting, he thought, that he should die here for her, just like he would have at the very beginning.

 _But . . . I don't want to die._ The thought occurred to him suddenly, through the mire in his mind, surprising even himself.

There was still Thales and Those Who Slither in the Dark to deal with, after all. With their plans foiled, they might try to revive Nemesis and the Ten Elites, as they had before. Not to mention, Edelgard had asked him to guide her once she became emperor. Much like he had for Dimitri and Claude in lives past, she would need to be protected, counseled, and—

He did not want to leave her side. Not again. Not like this.

His vision darkened, and he became only half-aware of the panicked, shaky voice in his ear. It all sounded so distant now. Somehow, he could taste blood in his mouth, feel it sliding down the back of his throat. _"No, Byleth! You can't— Hubert! Where is—?"_

He knew he didn't have the strength to go all the way back to Remire Village again, but maybe he could turn back enough time to say good-bye. He reached into himself, grasping for the Divine Pulse as he must have done at least a hundred times before, to find nothing there. His chest was empty, and still he felt nothing. He wondered briefly if he should feel grateful his death would be painless.

Then someone was cradling his head in their lap as something warm and wet hit his face. His last, disjointed thought before fading: _When did it start to rain?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the encouraging comments thus far. Once again, please let me know if anything is too confusing or poorly-handled. I am doing my best to incorporate the in-game lore and add to it with my headcanons, but it's possible I may have missed something. Also, let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see in future chapters. I won't promise anything, but I might try to incorporate it or write a short, off-shoot story like "Ends."
> 
> TL:DR The fight through Fhirdiad, Rhea's death, and the "A World for Humanity" cutscene.


	3. Font

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: none.
> 
> Chapter Tags: canon-divergent; post-canon; angst; hurt/comfort; character study; "NewGame+"; multiverse theory; M!Byleth; Sothis.

# Chapter Three:

#  ~~(The)~~ Font

? Guardian Moon, Imperial Year ?

"It is time to open your eyes, little one," prodded a familiar voice gently. "Or do you intend to sleep away forever?"

His eyes opened at once, only to find an upside-down girl with long, green hair smiling down at him. Her mysterious smile widened as their eyes met, and then he was lost in a sea of vibrant green.

Without moving, he furrowed his brow and stared back at her. "S-Sothis?"

_Is this a dream?_

"Were you expecting someone else?" she asked wryly. When she tilted her head to the side, loose strands of her hair fell and tickled his nose. She chuckled and poked his cheek with a stubby finger. "I dare say I will never tire of surprising you like this. Your face makes the most amusing expressions."

It's not a dream, he realized, eyes widening. Was he dead then? He had distinctly felt himself slipping away . . .

He bolted upright into a sitting position on the floor, his hands sliding across coarse stone. He instinctively clenched and unclenched his fingers and toes, and he rubbed his jaw, his cheeks, and his eyes, just to be sure. He even touched where she had poked his cheek. Nothing changed. There was no pain, he noted, and everything felt as it should.

 _It's real._ It had to be. Or at least as real as any of his other visions of Sothis.

Looking around, he recognized the crumbling pillars, weathered crypts, and strange, faintly-glowing crystals of the Holy Tomb beneath Garreg Mach Monastery. The empty throne behind Sothis towered over them both, and he was instantly reminded of how much he disliked this place. It was so damp and cold here, unlike the rest of the monastery, and the air was still and stagnant, full of dust particles stuck in suspension. Here, Sothis was the only source of light, the tomb's only source of warmth. She alone seemed immune to the gloom.

The Holy Tomb was the very last place he could pretend everything was okay, that a continent-spanning wasn't looming right on the horizon with his loved ones at its center. A part of him wanted to hate Edelgard for that, for staging her coup before he was ready, before he can _ever_ be ready with what limited time he has, but the tactician in him couldn't help but be equally impressed and dismayed by how easily she smuggled imperial troops into the sleepy town lying at the foot of Garreg Mach. He wanted to hate Rhea too, for what it was worth, as well as Those Who Slither in the Dark. After all, they were the ones who had set all of this in motion centuries ago. But maybe hate was too strong of a word. He _understood_ their actions, and maybe that was better.

His eyes returned to Sothis, now right-side up, and he swallowed heavily, mentally preparing himself to tell her about his latest failure. "Rhea's dead," he told her flatly, his voice echoing in this dark and damp place that, like her, seemed to exist outside of time and space. "So is Dimitri, Dedue, Gilbert, Catherine, and Cyril." He rattled off their names like a litany.

Her smile fell, turning wistful and wan, and there was a profound sadness in her eyes that somehow looked wrong on a little girl. "I know you tried your best to save them. You always do."

He nodded. "I'm . . . sorry about Rhea," he offered eventually.

"Don't be," she said as she folded her legs and sat down by his side on the stone floor. "She is only gone from this world. Not in all or even most." She paused, her lips sinking downwards into a frown. "Besides, she was hardly the Rhea I loved long ago. Her grief . . . was not kind."

Byleth blinked at her. She was being more cryptic than usual, he thought. Maybe he was dead after all, and this was her way of breaking it to him slowly. Frowning, he balled his hand into a fist and pressed his gauntlet into his thigh. He pressed harder, reveling in the sensation that told him he was alive. If he was dead, then this wasn't what he expected at all.

Then again, he wasn't sure what he had expected. He hadn't been a very good archbishop in his past life, although he did try. He had focused more on administrating, supporting Dimitri's vision for Fódlan's future, and leading the Knights of Seiros into battle, but he had picked up on the church's teachings due to Seteth's insistence. The Church of Seiros taught that the faithful would be received by the Goddess after death and join her at her home in the night sky. So, maybe it _was_ true, or at least partially.

His only issue was that the Holy Tomb, deep under Garreg Mach, was just about the farthest one could get from the Blue Sea Star. And if he wasn't dead, then he shouldn't be seeing her at all after choosing to fuse their souls once again in the Sealed Forest.

"How is this happening?" he asked suddenly, gesturing towards the space between them before hesitating. "Am I . . .?" He trailed off, unwilling to voice the rest.

Sothis's face puckered. "You are such a fool!" she shrieked, her voice climbing several octaves, and the Holy Tomb served only as an amphitheater, enhancing and distorting the sound even further. She placed her hands on her hips and gave him the fiercest glare. "You are not _dead!"_

The glowing blue crystals in their sconces seemed to brighten and dull in tune with the sound of her voice. He cringed but resisted the urge to cover his ears. "Then why—?"

"I . . ." She looked downwards, grabbing fistfuls of her purple robes, her face crumbling as her anger subsided into sadness. "I. . . . came to say good-bye," she said softly. "For good this time."

Byleth simply stared at her, uncomprehending. "What?"

When she looked at him again, her gaze was steady. Purposeful. "The deed is already done. I have already determined that this will be the last time we see each other. I am . . . releasing you from our bond."

He still didn't understand. Weren't their souls joined? Wasn't her crest stone, her _heart_ , buried inside his chest? Head reeling, mouth dry, he didn't quite know what to say. He didn't even know what this meant. Was she leaving him? Did she intend to take away the Divine Pulse? He just stared at her, deaf and dumb and blind, wondering, in his panic, if this was supposed to be a punishment somehow. It certainly felt like one.

As if sensing his thoughts, her nostrils flared again, and he thought he felt the ground beneath them shake. "This is not a _punishment_ , you dolt! What I am giving you is a _gift!"_

With a sigh, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips into a hard, thin line. "I . . . never should have let this go on for as long as I have. You were never meant to misuse my powers like this, and I fear it has done you irreparable harm."

"But I can do better," Byleth said at last, his voice firm. "Let me try one more time. I can still save them. I know I can." He paused. "Rhea might be beyond saving, but I can—"

She shook her head, her mane of green hair falling in rivulets around her small face. "Little one, can you even hear yourself? Do you see how affected you are?" she asked, sounding exasperated. "Even with the power of a progenitor god, you can alter fate but never change it completely. Some are simply set in stone. You cannot save Jeralt. You cannot stop the war. You cannot save everyone. Even if you were to let Edelgard die in your first encounter, there would still be a war. That is just how it is. Not even the gods can bend mortals to their whims, and mortals are so very . . . fragile yet complicated." She waved around her hands as if to punctuate her words. "This is _fate_. I had hoped you would have learned this by now."

"No," he said, lifting his chin. "I don't believe that. We _can_ change our fate. All we have to do is try."

"Oh, little one," she sighed, reaching out a hand to place over his fist, almost as if she was comforting a child. "How many years has it been? How many deaths and near-deaths? How many times will you reawaken in Remire Village before you are satisfied with the life you have? How many ghosts will come to haunt your mind? Are you as lost as your own little ones are without you there to guide them?"

He didn't answer. He was not sure himself anymore. Just like Jeralt had written in his journal, there had come a time when he simply stopped counting. It may have been over three hundred years. He may have watched his loved ones die over a hundred deaths. The only constant was how much each death affected him, how each one felt like the first time. He still saw their bodies in his sleep and sometimes he was even the one to cut them down.

"You have lived so long and achieved so much," she continued with a half-smile, eyes shining, and her hand felt so warm atop his. "I am so proud of you. I am glad it was you to whom my fate was bound. It was within you that I found my power yet again and remembered who I am. Over time, I have come to care about you a great deal. But that is precisely why I _must_ do this, no matter how much it hurts you or me. I admit it will be difficult at first. Perhaps I overestimated you, perhaps I am the one to blame for all of this, but I will not allow you to continue following this self-destructive path any longer. Sometimes, we must all learn to let go."

Maybe she was right, thought Byleth. Maybe he was as bad as the worst versions of Dimitri and Rhea and Edelgard, so consumed by the ghosts of their pasts that they were unable to see their chosen paths caused more harm than good. Maybe he did have his own ghosts now, but even that realization wouldn't stop him from trying. No matter what he did, no matter what he tried, in the lives he had chosen to side against her, then Edelgard always died. Now that he had seen firsthand what laid in store down Edelgard's path, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could save them all if he just knew the right words to say, the right gifts to give, the right leverage to use. Why couldn't Sothis see that? He could only wish she believed in him as much as he believed in her.

He thought again of Dimitri, Dedue, and the hate-filled looks they had given him across the battlefield before they died. As if he had committed some unforgiveable sin, as if they _knew_ what he had done, choosing Edelgard and Hubert instead of them. His mouth twisted from the memory. Byleth had never begged Sothis for anything in his life before, but he found himself begging now. "Sothis, _please_ . . ."

"I am sorry, little one," she said, shaking her head as she retracted her hand. "You will not sway me this time."

He frowned when he heard the resolution in her voice, but he knew better than to argue with a goddess. He looked away and clenched his jaw as all trace of defiance left him. His mouth went dry, and his shoulders drooped as something in his chest began to throb.

"But what am I supposed to do?" he whispered. "Without you, what am I . . .?"

She sighed. "For now? Can we not just sit awhile and enjoy this moment we have? In this place, we have all the time we should ever need." She pushed on his shoulder. "Lie down, little one."

He didn't move. Again, he saw Dedue and Dimitri with eyes full of accusations.

"Come now," she pouted at him. "Please? For me?"

Reluctantly, he lay back, and she scooted behind him to take his head into her lap. Slowly, she began to weave her fingers through his hair while she started to hum a familiar melody. Her fingers were warm and practiced, as if she had done this a thousand times before. It reminded him of Rhea, with her soothing voice and serene smile, only different. This time, he knew there were no hidden expectations, and he didn't hear Jeralt's warning voice going off in his ear, as loud and clear as a bell, saying, _"Don't trust Rhea."_ He trusted Sothis, so it was rather comforting. Because of her gentle touch, his jaw unclenched, and the ache in his chest lessened. He still wanted to be angry at her, but he could no longer stoke the feeling so it had gone out, leaving only the cold cinders behind.

"What will happen to you?" he asked, looking up at her through his bangs. "Will you die?"

"Of course not," she scoffed. "Do not be so ridiculous. It takes much more than this to kill a god. Even one without a body such as I. Think of it more like a home-coming."

He thought again of the Blue Sea Star but didn't know where to even begin making sense of her words.

Sothis chuckled. "It is just as well. My departure was long overdue. A world without gods, a world for humanity . . . This is what you wanted, yes? What you and your little ones have fought for this time around? Although, in a way," she went on thoughtfully, her voice lowering, "I suppose I am granting someone's long-unanswered prayer. . . ."

"Whose prayer?"

"Oh, did I say that out loud? Never mind my musings," she said and smiled at him mysteriously.

His gaze traveled past her. While he traced the lines of the vaulted ceiling, his eye-lids began to feel heavy. "Do we have to say good-bye?" he asked suddenly. "What if we just stay here? Forever?"

"Well, that would be most ill-advised," she tisked. "It is past time you cut your own path. No more retreading the old."

"But I . . ."

He felt Sothis shift behind him. "She is waiting for you, little one," she whispered into his ear. He stiffened, starting to pull away, but her fingers were still tangled in his hair. "Ah, ah. You can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me. I know how much she has always meant to you."

Inexplicably, Edelgard's face sprang to mind, sooty and tired-looking, with a trail of blood dripping from her hairline, smiling with relief as she helped him to his feet. Something in his chest lurched while another part of him wanted to protest. In truth, he had always cared about Edelgard, but Sothis's words implied she meant more than as his student. Love? he thought, frowning. He couldn't possibly—

Above him, Sothis's lips twisted into a smirk, and when she giggled, the sound was light and airy. "And _still_ you deny it! To think you would have died for her so early on . . . and you broke one of your father's rules. Do you recall?"

Byleth remembered. He even remembered berating himself for it during their first night at Garreg Mach. _"We're mercenaries, kid,"_ Jeralt had told him once long, long ago after showing him how to properly sear a fish over a campfire. It felt like an impossible number of lifetimes ago, when he was still impossibly small, swung swords like they were sticks, and he could all but swim in his first chainmail hauberk. _"Gold is nice and all, but don't go getting yourself killed for someone else. Not even me. You got that? That's rule number one. You don't take risks like that for anyone. Chances are, they won't do the same for you."_

But most of all, he remembered Sothis's teasing, which had only grown worse after he chose the Black Eagles for the first time. The night after choosing, she had been quite relentless, sitting cross-legged on his bed, impatiently watching him read a _"terribly boring"_ tome about Garreg Mach's storied history. _"Why the Black Eagles? Why that house?"_ she had asked suddenly, startling him. _"The Blue Lions certainly demonstrated that they are capable fighters, and as a whole the Golden Deer appear to be a spirited bunch."_

He had looked up at her from his book, while silently shelving the author's theory that it was the Apostle Chevalier who had spearheaded monastery's construction, and said, _"I don't know."_

 _"Hmm,"_ Sothis hummed, eyeing him suspiciously. _"Did your decision today have anything at all to do with the girl who keeps reappearing in your thoughts? This . . . Edelgard?"_

 _"I . . . do not know,"_ he had said after stiffening.

Sothis had giggled. _"My, my! How quaint! It is only our second night here, and already you seem to have a little crush on the imperial princess."_

He hadn't known what to say to that. He had simply glared at her before he returned to his book with a soft sigh, determined to tune her out. It had been a strange time for him, when the monastery was still so strange and new, and he was getting used to the girl in his head. In retrospect, his initial decision to keep a professional distance from his students had been in part due to her teasing. His stubborn way of denying he had any kind of feelings for the heir to Adrestia — and his first regret, in hindsight.

"I remember the teasing at least," Byleth accused with a wan half-smile.

Sothis giggled again before she sobered. Her mouth twisted slightly as she smoothed down his bangs. "To . . . answer your earlier question, I suppose you will do as mortals have always done. You go. You live. You find purpose in your life or that which makes you happy. Surround yourself with loved ones. Chase the receding horizon. What has been done to you cannot be undone, and I have tried my best to spare you from the worst of the trauma but . . . I have great faith that you will overcome this as you have all else. It is well past time you learned to embrace your humanity, is it not? I can only hope that you find the peace you deserve." Her eyes closed again, as if pained. "Do not stay too long in the dark with your ghosts, little one. Do not be like my Rhea and let your grief fester so."

His eye-lids drooped again, but he rallied with a nod. "Thank you . . . for everything."

"I shall miss this dearly," she said with a chuckle, her eyes watery again. "So long have I been on this path with you. Through you, I got to see and hear this world. I even got to chastise you from time to time. Perhaps we will see each other again, many years from now." Her smile fell. "But now it is time for us both to go."

He felt himself fading slowly. His vision blurred, and for one moment, instead of seeing Sothis, he saw a fully-grown woman with pointed ears wearing Sothis's ornate purple robes. She looked a lot like Rhea. When something broke inside of his chest, this time he _knew_ it was just his heart.

"Good-bye, Byleth," she whispered.

_Good-bye, Sothis._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment or a kudos if you're enjoying the story so far, and, as always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see in future chapters or if I missed something. 
> 
> TL:DR Recognizing that Byleth is deeply traumatized and that she has no place in the future he has chosen, Sothis takes it upon herself to free him from the vicious cycle he has created for himself - and from their bond. She comforts him and they say good-bye for the last time.


	4. Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: none.
> 
> Chapter Tags: canon-divergent; post-canon; angst; friendship; hurt/comfort; character study; M!Byleth; Edelgard von Hresvelg; Dorothea Arnault; Hubert von Vestra; Manuela Casagranda; Hanneman von Essar; Hanneman von Essar/Manuela Casagranda; "Byleth needs to seriously stop waking up all the damn time."

# Chapter Four:

# Wake

1 Harpstring Moon, Imperial Year 1186

It was the sound of voices that woke him, filtering through the blanket of exhaustion, and once conscious, he became acutely aware of just how sore his body was. Instinctively, he clenched and unclenched his fingers and toes, trying to take stock of what hurt and what didn't, but it was soon obvious that this was a lost cause.

Everything hurt. _Everything._

"—aren't you even the least bit hungry? Honestly, when's the last time you ate anything? This morning? Don't tell me . . . Before the battle _yesterday?"_

With a frown, he tried to listen, to hone in on the voices speaking. This one sounded worried, sultry, and so very _feminine._ It brought to mind a warm, healing touch and an oddly distinct smell — an intoxicating blend of an earthy, almost flowery scent, frankincense, and alcohol. With his eyes still closed, Byleth tried to put a name and a face to it but couldn't. All he saw was a wall of flames, Sothis with her mysterious smile, a monstrous white beast, and a blurry palette of reds, whites, purples, and blacks. He remembered thinking he was about to die.

_What happened?_

"She's right, Edie. You're going to collapse if you keep going like this. Even emperors need to relax once in a while. You should take a moment for yourself. I'll even go get you something from the mess if you like. Dinner should be ready by now."

This voice was warm, gentle, tired. It stirred something in his brain, a distant memory he had almost forgotten. A pond alight with the reds, oranges, and pinks of sunset, and a young woman staring out across the water without seeing. One hand cupped her mouth while the other hugged herself. _". . . And Ferdie was there,"_ she said, her voice breaking. _"We killed Ferdie, Professor. He used to be our friend. Do you remember those days?"_

The bottom of his stomach dropped out, and he was honestly a little caught off guard by the intensity of the sensation. It was a memory that haunted his dreams every now and then, a memory best forgotten. Dorothea had easily fallen in with the Blue Lions after asking to join their class, which had been surprising in itself, but how could he have known the rest of his Eagles would side with Edelgard? Their resolve to fight against her had seemed sincere just the life before . . .

"You're beginning to sound like Hubert. While I appreciate your concern," said a third voice, "I am fine. Truly."

The third voice was familiar too, almost intimately so. It triggered a landslide of emotion and half-buried memories. Hearing it reminded him of a red and gold throne, and a young woman kneeling in front of it, paler than a ghost, breathing hard, clutching a darkened axe with the last of her strength, her pale eyes shifting in and out of focus, in and out of pain, with a dribble of blood on her lips from wounds unseen. Wounds he did not cause. _"Your path . . . lies across my grave,"_ she choked out. _"It is time for you to find the courage to walk it."_

Once again, he could taste the bile filling his mouth, feel the pinprick in his eyes, the tightness in his chest as something pulled away, the unshakeable, ominous feeling that he was about to lose something that could not be replaced. He had felt something similar when he fought Nemesis, after a sort of tacit recognition, but this was so much more _intense_. A strange, primal feeling, as if the blood in his veins resonated with the blood in Nemesis's veins and the blood in hers, as if his body itself somehow _knew_ when their lives were snuffed out. As if it mourned the loss. He had felt something then, and he was definitely feeling it again now, and it was all so very _real_. Nearly as visceral as Jeralt's first death had been. It was a hollowness that sat heavy in his chest like a stone. As heavy as the Sword of the Creator in his hand. Despite knowing what came next, what must _always_ come next, he still couldn't look away as the woman said her last words and bowed her head. Something that could only be panic set in, sending his pulse racing. He didn't want to remember, he didn't want to see—

His eyes snapped open and the first thing he saw was a bright, crimson red. So much red. His stomach churned. He blinked at it in confusion as his senses returned to him and the strange feelings in his chest began to slowly, very slowly, dissipate.

Had his memories always been so vivid? Why did he feel so sick? And where was he exactly?

He tried to gather his rambling thoughts, to rein them in. He knew he had to be back in their encampment. Most of the tents were a plain, off-white color, but here he was, staring at a red, slightly-sagging canopy instead. Not to mention he could tell the difference between a real, honest-to-Goddess bed, with thick furs and blankets, from a cot or his own bedroll. This naturally ruled out the infirmary and his own tent, which were where he expected to have been brought.

"Would you at least allow me to heal that cut on your forehead then?" the first voice asked. "It'll only take me a moment."

Someone sighed in resignation. "Very well."

Careful not to move his head too quickly and signal to everyone that he was awake, Byleth moved his eyes slowly around the room to take stock of his surroundings. He was in Edelgard's pavilion, he realized at once. It was easily the largest in camp, and he recognized the pavilion's contents — the war table, folding screens, hardwood furniture, lit braziers, carpets and tapestries bearing the two-headed eagle motif. His eyes caught on the Sword of the Creator lying on the war table amongst the scattered piles of maps, books, and pieces of parchment.

Dorothea was closest, sitting on a chair by his bedside while she watched the two standing at the foot of the bed. Manuela held her palm over Edelgard's forehead, and a soft, golden glow emanated from her hand. All three women had lined, tired-looking faces darkened with soot. One of Dorothea's sleeves was visibly torn and sagging. Edelgard herself still had a trail of dried blood along her hairline.

"There now," said Manuela with a smile and her usual cheerfulness as she handed back Edelgard's war crown. "Feeling better?" She reached out and grabbed a wet towel out of a nearby basin to offer to Edelgard, who took it gratefully after placing the crown back on her head.

"Yes, thank you." Edelgard dabbed at her face with the cloth, washing away some of the blood and grime.

"It's probably going to take a lot more scrubbing to get all of that off," Manuela told her before her expression softened. "You really ought to go eat something. It'll be okay. Byleth's going to be just fine, Edelgard, I promise," she said, giggling. "I mean, a fella like that? Believe you me, I wouldn't _dream_ of letting anything happen to him."

"That's not—" Edelgard spluttered, her cheeks reddening. "Ugh, never mind. I'm not hungry, I promise."

Manuela's arms dropped to her sides as she released a long-suffering sigh. "Well, suit yourself then. But don't say we didn't try to—"

At that moment, Byleth's stomach growled loudly, and he froze involuntarily as all three women looked towards him at once. Their faces lit up when they realized his eyes were open. The room fell into a flurry of smiles and movement.

"Oh, Professor! You're awake!" Manuela exclaimed as she bustled past Dorothea to his bedside. She put the back of her hand on his forehead and then grabbed his wrist to feel for a pulse while Edelgard rushed to his other side.

With a lopsided grin, Dorothea leaned forward eagerly to see around Manuela, and her green eyes were bright with relief and amusement. "How are you feeling, Professor? Besides hungry, I mean."

Byleth thought about it. He was tired. He was most definitely sore. His memories weren't all quite there. But he also felt oddly empty. Lighter, in a sense. And with so many strange and new sensations, something was definitely off. He wasn't used to such heightened feelings, and his stomach still lurched from earlier. Briefly, he wondered if he was starting to come down with some kind of illness.

"Strange," he said at last, unable to find the words to describe his malaise. When he sat up, his head started throbbing. He looked down and noticed that he was bare-chested, which wasn't much of a surprise given the circumstances. What _was_ surprising were the deep purple bruises scattered across his torso. Thinking back to the battle, which was little more than a foggy mess of fire and smoke, he couldn't remember how he had gotten so many.

Manuela leaned forward, now uncomfortably close, to unceremoniously hold open one of his eyes. Eye level with her breasts, Byleth tried to look anywhere but at the two perky globes in his flushed face. "You look like you just saw a ghost," quipped the physician as she drew away. "Wait . . . ah, there's a little color now."

Swallowing thickly, he thought again about the wall of flames and the monstrous white beast. "My memory's a bit . . . hazy," he admitted. "What happened? Was I knocked out?"

"We did it, my teacher," said Edelgard, beaming at him. "We prevailed against the Immaculate One, and then you collapsed only a moment later. At first, I thought you were dead. With Hubert and Dorothea's help, we brought you here, to my tent." She paused, expression falling. "I hope that's acceptable. The physicians in the infirmary have their hands full with the worst of the wounded soldiers and refugees."

"It's fine," he said quickly, waving away her concern. "And Fhirdiad? The Knights of Seiros?"

"As we speak, imperial soldiers are extinguishing the fires and setting up windbreaks to protect the few unaffected areas, with the Strike Force's assistance. Hubert has also informed me that the remaining Knights of Seiros within the city are laying down their weapons and surrendering. Ferdinand, Felix, and Leonie have been taking their weapons and keeping an eye on them."

Byleth nodded, exhaling deeply. _It's a start._

Beside him, Manuela fidgeted with the ribbons on her white coat. "There is . . . something else that really ought to be discussed. Your appearance is . . . well. . . ."

Byleth quirked an eyebrow at her. "What? What is it?"

"She means you no longer look like a child of the Goddess," said Edelgard bluntly.

Dorothea shot her a mild look of disapproval. "Erm, here, Professor," she said as she reached into her pocket, pulled out a silver compact, and handed it to him. "Maybe it would be best if you saw for yourself."

Byleth took the compact reluctantly and opened it to look at his reflection. Edelgard was right. His eyes were no longer a glowing green, but a dark, impenetrable blue. Recoiling slightly, he saw that his seafoam-green hair was gone too, replaced by its natural color, and the implication sent him reeling again. It brought to mind Sothis, and what she had told him, the terrible thing she had done, and suddenly it felt as though a steel gauntlet had punched through his chest.

 _Sothis?_ he tried, urgently feeling around in his chest. _Sothis! Are you still there? Are you . . .?_

This time, there was no playful scoff, no sarcastic remark, no childish insult. He could not even feel the throbbing in his chest, his usual reminder that she was still there, still listening. His chest was simply still. That, he realized suddenly, was what he had been missing, why he felt so empty. Sothis's presence was gone, and the silence now spoke volumes.

A wave of pain overtook him, as if he was witnessing Jeralt's first death all over again. Jaw clenched tight and gaze locked straight ahead, he felt the first pinprick of tears and blinked them away, balling his hands into fists.

Seeing the look on his face, Edelgard's own softened, her voice turning gentle. "I . . . I owe you an apology, Byleth. I suspected something like this might happen, but I never thought. . . . Due to your appearance, I can only assume what has happened to the Goddess's power."

She still didn't know the truth; at the time, none of his Eagles had the luxury to notice when he chose to merge with Sothis once again in the Sealed Forest as they were fiercely beset on all sides by an army of armored demonic beasts and Agarthan soldiers, significantly more formidable than in past encounters, as if their enemies had known to compensate for his large class and Edelgard's trust in him. Caught off guard, his choice had been to either merge with Sothis or else risk losing someone from his large class, spread out too thin between the trees, and he hadn't made the decision lightly. Without the powered Sword of the Creator, he alone simply hadn't the strength to fight so many and race to where he was most needed. So, even Kronya, it seemed, had picked up a stratagem or two from his class this time. Just not enough to save herself or Solon from his divide-and-conquer outmaneuver to separate the two, in the end.

Byleth reached into his chest to activate the Divine Pulse, but nothing was there. His chest was empty. Time did not start flowing in reverse. The seconds continued to crawl by as he evaluated his new normal.

"No," he croaked at last, frowning. "It's gone. _She's_ gone."

"She?" Edelgard repeated, blinking at him in surprise.

Dorothea reached out to him. "Byleth, are you—?"

"It's fine," he lied, withdrawing from Dorothea's hand. _She was my best friend,_ he wanted to say, _my first friend, and now she's gone._ He didn't blame them for not knowing. He had never liked speaking with anyone about his past, which included Sothis. He was well aware of how his relationship with her seemed, how insane it all sounded.

He looked at Edelgard and breathed deeply. _Maybe Sothis was right, after all. This is what we both wanted, isn't it? What we fought for? A world without gods?_ Sothis's sarcasm and general mischievousness had made it all too easy for him to forget what she actually was, and how the future Edelgard envisioned did not, could not, include her in it.

A part of him had thought this might feel freeing. There had been plenty of times when he had wished the annoying girl in his head would just disappear outright and leave him to his own thoughts. The time after they merged souls for the first time had been a blessing in a way, though not for long. Now, the more he thought about it, the tighter his chest constricted. He would never see Sothis again. He would never again hear her voice. She had been with him from the very beginning, across all of his lives, teasing him about his students and first choice of house, conspiring with him to find a peaceful solution to an impossible problem, and comforting him when he failed. He didn't know if gods could die the same way he could, but this certainly felt permanent, like another loss to add to his list.

What's more, she had taken the Divine Pulse with her. He would never again turn back the hands of time. This was his last chance, his _only_ chance, to make things right for Fódlan. This was the life he was stuck with, for good or ill, and the realization tied his insides into knots. Dimitri, Dedue, Catherine, Gilbert, and Cyril could not be saved. They were gone and would stay gone, and there was nothing he could do, nothing he could tell himself, that would make that fact any easier to swallow. They would never go on to do the things he had seen them do in his past lives: Dimitri the Savior King, champion of the weak; Dedue spearheading the reconciliation with Duscur while assisting Ashe with his restaurant; Thunder Catherine and Inferno Caspar, the infamous, wandering duo; Gilbert returning to his family at last and making long-overdue amends; how happy everyone had been at Cyril and Lysithea's winter wedding. . . .

He was so preoccupied with his memories that he almost didn't hear someone push aside the tent flap and step inside. The newcomer's face was also smoke-blackened, and as he walked briskly up to Edelgard, he threw Byleth a mixed look of surprise and subdued relief. "Well now, there's a familiar face," he said, chuckling. "I've never been one for sentimentality, but . . . I am glad to see you're finally up, Professor."

Looking at him now, it was hard not to see the dark knight as he had been in his first life: antagonizing them as they fought their way through Enbarr to the imperial palace, launching long-range spells at them until Byleth had finally sent Petra to stop him. She had had no problems ducking and dodging his spells with all the lithe grace of a seasoned huntress, while yelling at him to stop, until he was within range of her bow. Then she let fly several arrows in rapid succession as she sidestepped another miasma. The first hit him in the gut, staggering him, the second in the collarbone, and the third squarely in the chest, right where his heart should be. As he lay bleeding out on the pavement in front of the imperial palace, his face frozen in a wide-eyed expression of shock, Petra had stood beside him, stony-faced and silent, clutching her bow with both hands.

She was still standing like that by the time he and the rest of the Eagles caught up to her. _"He was a friend once,"_ she said, without moving to retrieve her arrows, _"and I hunted him down like prey. I am having . . . I have regrets, Professor. I have sadness. Is that wrong?"_

The blood pooling around his body had been such a vibrant red, in stark contrast to his pale complexion and black suit. His face, wide-eyed from shock, as if he had not quite realized he too could die, was all Byleth could see. "Hello, H-Hubert," mumbled Byleth. If he wasn't so shaken, he would be surprised by the sincerity in the dark knight's voice.

Hubert turned back to Edelgard. "Your Majesty," he said with a bow. "I dislike having to interrupt you during this heartfelt moment, but we've managed to put out most of the fires. Ingrid has reported the one raging through the wharves is proving to be most difficult to extinguish, so I've redirected most of the Strike Force to head that way. I have also finished preparing those . . . arrangements you requested. It would be best if we dealt with this matter at once."

"Thank you, Hubert. You are quite right," sighed Edelgard before giving her retainer a smile. "As always. The sooner we deal with it, the better I shall feel."

Byleth swung his legs over the side of the bed and planted his feet on the ground before cringing from the exertion. "I'll go with you."

"Oh, no, you don't," growled Manuela as she shoved him back down onto the bed. "You're not going anywhere, Professor. Not on my watch. Besides, I'm sure Hanneman will want to perform every test he's got now that you're awake. That man will do anything for his precious Crest research."

Byleth frowned but didn't resist. He didn't like the idea of letting any of his students out of his sight right now. Not even for a moment. If anything happened, there would be no way he could save them. The very idea unsettled him and caused his stomach to churn again. "But I—"

Edelgard gave him a tired smile. "She's right, my teacher. You should stay here and get some rest. We can speak of it later. For now, Hubert and I can handle this matter." She glanced at Dorothea. "Dorothea, would you please be a dear and stay with him until I return?"

With a giggle, Dorothea smiled brightly at them both and nodded. Her bouncing braids reminded him of Petra. "You got it, Edie! I'll make sure our dear professor here behaves."

Byleth knew without a shadow of a doubt that Edelgard would have never agreed to this if their situations were reversed, but he nodded anyway, reluctantly. He fell back onto the bed heavily and watched Manuela and Dorothea through narrowed eyes. Whether or not he could make an escape in his current condition was debatable, but there was no way he would be able to leave with both of them watching.

He watched his two ex-students leave together, and while Hubert held the flap open for Edelgard to slip through, the pavilion was filled with the familiar sounds of camp: the voices of men and women, the rattle of wagons, the metallic clang of weapons, the clink of armor, the hissing of wyverns, the nickering of horses and pegasi. Everything was silenced when the flap fell back into place, and Byleth was left wondering about their urgent business. He would have to ask Edelgard about it later.

"Are you in any pain?" Manuela asked him, hesitating by his side.

"Just a little sore," Byleth lied, knowing the truth wouldn't allow him to leave any sooner. Everyone knew white magic was only good for staunching blood, mending flesh, and fusing bone; it was no use for soreness, and it wouldn't help with his bruises' discoloration. That was something the monastery's sauna was used for.

"I can't help you with that, I'm afraid," said Manuela, looking perplexed as she stroked her cheek. "Your vitals are good at least. You have a nice and strong heartbeat."

"I have a heartbeat?" Byleth repeated, blinking at her in surprise. Even Dorothea looked a little shocked from hearing that.

He had spent time in the monastery's infirmary before, so Manuela was no stranger to his condition. At first, she had been rather disturbed by her colleague's lack of a heartbeat, saying it shouldn't be possible and that he should be dead. But over time, she had come to accept it as one of those oddities about him, just like the fact he could wield the Sword of the Creator without its crest stone, allegedly fend off a pack of armored demonic beasts by himself, and had been gifted the power of the goddess. The impossible just seemed to happen whenever he was around, so she had probably forgotten about it until today.

"Believe me, I'm as shocked as you are," Manuela said as she fell into the empty chair beside her protégé.

"But that _is_ a good thing, isn't it?" asked Dorothea. "Having a heartbeat?"

"I . . . I'm not sure. I'm a little out of my depth here, if I'm perfectly honest," admitted Manuela. "You're a total medical anomaly, Byleth. Rhea might have known more, but. . . ."

". . . She's no longer an option," Byleth finished, exhaling deeply.

"Well, yes. But who knows? Maybe that old goat Hanneman will know something. He _is_ the Crest expert, after all." She rolled her eyes, but her smile seemed heartfelt. "I do hope that man hasn't gotten lost on the way to the privy. Or heavens forbid, _fallen_ in."

Byleth's stomach rumbled again, as if to remind him that it was still there and still hungry.

"Do you want me to go grab something from the mess, Professor?" Dorothea asked, chuckling. "Edie may not be, but I _know_ you're hungry."

Byleth smiled at her gratefully. "That would be wonderful, Dorothea. Thank you." It didn't matter which house he chose; they all came to know of his prodigious appetite eventually.

Dorothea winked at him. "It's no problem. I'll be right back." With that, she hopped out of her chair and headed for the pavilion's exit. Just as she was about to leave, Hanneman entered the pavilion and held open the flap for her to pass through. The songstress flashed him a smile as she squeezed past him and disappeared.

"Speak of the devil. There he is now," muttered Manuela under her breath.

"Ah!" exclaimed Hanneman, hurrying over to the bed as soon as he saw that Byleth was conscious. "You're awake! Excellent!"

"It's good to see you too, Hanneman," said Byleth tightly. A part of him wondered if Hanneman had brought along any of the intimidating metal instruments from his office in the hopes of finding someone new to poke and prod. If so, he was not looking forward to this at all. He hadn't enjoyed Hanneman's strenuous "exercises" or any part of the bloodletting, hair-collecting, tongue-numbing process.

"Courtesies first. How are you feeling, Professor? Anything worth mentioning?" Hanneman asked, sounding cheerful, and his eye seemed to twinkle behind his monocle.

"I'd say worse, now that you're here," remarked Manuela dryly. When Hanneman shot her an irritated look, she backpedaled. "I, er . . . Sorry. It just slipped out. Old habits, you know?"

"Manuela! How rude! I thought we agreed we would both try to set _new_ habits to stop ourselves from fighting," said Hanneman while he glared at her. Then he shook his head. "Ugh, we cannot afford these interruptions. I am simply going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"I feel fine," Byleth interjected quickly. "Just a little sore."

"Hmm. Would you kindly do me a favor then?" asked the older man. "Not to worry, it's a rather painless test. All I require is that you pick up the Sword of the Creator." He gestured towards the war table. "I believe it was left over there with the rest of your belongings."

Byleth stared at him for a moment, weighing his colleague's words. "Okay."

This time, Manuela remained silent and unmoving as Byleth slipped out of the bed and climbed to his feet. Barefoot and wearing nothing but his trousers, he staggered towards the war table on shaky legs, grabbing the backs of the chairs to steady himself while Hanneman hovered nearby, watching closely and ready to step in if he started to fall.

Manuela frowned. "Maybe this isn't—"

"I am certain he can handle it," said Hanneman. "It is prudent to study what happened to our colleague without an undue delay. Do try not to be such a worrywart, my dear."

Manuela harrumphed and fell back into her seat, muttering something about needing a drink. Byleth finally made it to the war table and grasped the Sword of the Creator's hilt. Immediately, he felt none of the sword's familiar power. His blood didn't sing from being in such close proximity to the weapon, and the blade stayed distinctly dark. Dormant. He picked it up from the table and gave it a shallow test swing. It was heavier than he remembered. The blade stayed dark, confirming his earlier suspicions as it no doubt did for Hanneman as well. The sword in his hand drooped to his side.

"The Crest of Flames," said Byleth. "Is it gone?"

Hanneman tapped his chin thoughtfully. "It certainly appears that way, doesn't it? Most intriguing. Your eyes and hair have returned to their original color, and now it seems the Sword of the Creator no longer responds to your touch. If my hypothesis is correct, then this would mean . . ."

His eyes brightened. "We must return to Garreg Mach at once! There are a few more tests I'd like to run just to be certain, but I will need the lab instruments I left in my office. Then we'll have our answers at last. Oh, the glory of progress!"

"Great," sighed Manuela. "Just great. Here we go again. . . ."

For once, blessedly, Hanneman didn't take the bait and shot Manuela another scathing look instead. "Professor," he said, his voice steady and moustache twitching as he took Byleth's free hand with both of his own and began to shake it enthusiastically, "I hope you realize there is a very real possibility of making a significant breakthrough from this development. I must admit it's been an absolute joy of mine to study you. I've learned so much about Crests, and the Crest of Flames in particular, with your assistance. It's astounding! So many Crestological mysteries surround you, and you've become such a valued speci—pardon, colleague. Thank you for your understanding and your efforts to help me advance in this field of study. Your support is most appreciated. Unlike certain others I shall not name."

As Hanneman continued to shake Byleth's hand, Manuela bristled. "I'm right here, darling, if you've got something to say."

"I do, as a matter of fact!" Hanneman retorted, whirling on her as he dropped Byleth's hand. "You could certainly afford to be more like Byleth and periodically show your support for my Crest research! It wouldn't hurt you to do that, now would it?"

"You're welcome," said Byleth unhappily to no one in particular. Both Hanneman and Manuela had clearly stopped listening to him to focus on their ongoing argument. After he placed the sword back on the table, he ran one hand down its length, feeling the bumps and grooves in the bone. He frowned, trying not to think of Sothis, but even that was a losing battle. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his jacket, boots, tunic, and gauntlets stacked neatly on a chest of drawers. He went to it and began dressing himself while Hanneman and Manuela continued to squabble like an old married couple behind him.

He hoped Dorothea would return soon, if only to rescue him from their ceaseless bickering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, so, as you might've already noticed, I split the last chapter into two. I was intending to do an "in-game day" per chapter, but they're starting to get fairly lengthy at 10k words or more, so I've decided to start breaking them up into "scenes" instead. I hope that's not a problem.
> 
> That said, this chapter was originally going to have two more parts, which I will post as two more chapters in the coming days once they're finished. This month's chapters are dedicated to the awesome redditors who helped me brainstorm ideas for a better CF ending, as well as to the four or five people who seemed to enjoy the last chapter. I will try to finish and post the Azure Moon chapter of "Ends" later this month. Possibly next month.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Please review if you're enjoying the story, and, as always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see in future chapters or if I missed something.
> 
> TL:DR Byleth wakes up and realizes he's reverted back to his old, human self. Edelgard, Dorothea, Manuela, and Hanneman help.


	5. Last Rite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: attempted cremation (I don't know; it's kind of dark).
> 
> Chapter Tags: post-canon; angst; friendship; exposition; character study; Edelgard von Hresvelg; Hubert von Vestra; Dimitri Blaiddyd; Anselma von Arundel/Patricia Blaiddyd; Rhea/Immaculate One.

# Chapter Five:

#  ~~(The)~~ Last Rite

1 Harpstring Moon, 1186

If there was one thing Edelgard despised as much as the Crests, it was the cold. Having been born in Enbarr and spending most of her formative years there, the cold had a way of seeping through her clothes and armor and burrowing into her bones. She was practically defenseless against it, and few places in Fódlan could get as bitterly cold as northern Faerghus even in early spring.

So, in truth, she hated both and would have preferred being somewhere, _anywhere,_ else.

Fhirdiad stirred up too many old memories. It reminded her of sadness, of her half-remembered childhood. It reminded her of loss and broken promises and too many unanswered questions. It reminded her of her uncle's increasingly bizarre and paranoid behavior, the way he seemed to become a cold-hearted man overnight not long after they arrived, leaving her by herself for days and weeks at a time in their rented townhouse by the castle square. (And when he was in Fhirdiad, her uncle had insisted on dragging her with him whenever he went to balls or visited certain kingdom nobles such as Alfons Kleiman and Cornelia Arnim.) It reminded her of the nights she had been either too cold or too miserable to sleep, staring up at the ceiling crossbeams of her bedroom while the fire in the grate burned down to embers. In the three years she lived there, she had desperately missed her father, her mother, her half-siblings, her friend and vassal Hubert, and even annoying little Ferdinand at times. She had only been nine years old when they left for Fhirdiad, twelve when they returned to Enbarr, and no one — not the handful of trusted servants they brought with them and least of all her uncle — would tell her why they were truly there. The servants had merely patted her head and reminded her that, per her uncle's orders, she was not to leave the house or it's enclosed yard under any circumstances, which had only naturally encouraged her to do so. It hadn't been long before sneaking out became her specialty of sorts, much to the servants' consternation.

When she hadn't been exploring the townhouse's dusty library full of old political treatises and knights' tales, her younger self had enjoyed stealing through sparse gardens, bustling markets, cathedral grounds, and the castle's lowermost gatehouse as silently as a shadow, avoiding the patrols of knights in their shining steel armor and royal blue tabards.

The city itself had always reminded her of the color grey, thanks to its somber architecture, overcast skies, and abundant granite stonework, which Edelgard found herself grateful for now. There was little risk that anything around the castle square would catch afire again. Most of the stone buildings were still standing after Rhea's conflagration had burned through. The pinewood buildings hadn't been nearly as lucky, leaving behind their blackened skeletons if anything was left at all besides rubble. Now a great deal of the capital was not only grey but black and white from smoke, soot, ash, and snow. It was a stark contrast in color from last night's flames.

It had been a cruel twist of fate that Edelgard never saw her mother even once during any of her childhood expeditions throughout the city. Her earliest memories of her mother were foggy but still some of her fondest: Though quiet and introspective at times, Anselma von Arundel had been a kind and fiercely-protective woman, who had brushed Edelgard's hair every night before bed and, just like her brother Volkhard, loved the opera. In Enbarr, her uncle had told her that they were going to see Anselma in Fhirdiad, but that must have been nothing more than a lie to entice her enthusiastic cooperation. A way to remove her from the brewing trouble in the upper echelons of the empire. And for years, she wanted to believe it was only a ploy, that her mother couldn't possibly have settled in Fhirdiad after her exile from the imperial court due to the jealous scheming of the other consorts. Little did she know her mother had been cloistered away in the cliffside castle with another family the entire time, living under a false name, so frustratingly close and yet impossibly out of reach. But such was the gift, or curse, of hindsight.

It hurt Edelgard deeply to think Fhirdiad was where her mother had been the day she was taken away in chains by the Prime Minister, while her stoic uncle and helpless father looked on, to languish away in a cold cell beneath the imperial palace in Enbarr. When she wasn't being subjected to horrific experimentation, she was in her cell, fading in and out of consciousness as she listened to the skittering of rats in the dark, the heart-wrenching screams and muffled cries of her half-siblings. At first, in her most lucid moments, she had cried out for her parents and prayed to the Goddess to save her and her siblings, to send someone, anyone, who could help; but as time dragged on, the voices of her siblings went silent one by one, and the pale mages in black robes continued to cut into her flesh with more and more regularity. So, she stopped praying. She began to wish instead that she too would die, only death never came.

The pain only stopped when she was declared by her siblings' murderers to be "their greatest success." By the time she was finally released from the dungeons half a year later, heavily scarred and emaciated, her growth forever stunted and unable to recognize the silver-haired stranger in the mirror, it wasn't long at all before she learned that her mother had died. It was Hubert who eventually told her the truth, after snooping through the letters and documents in his father's study: that her mother _had_ been living in Fhirdiad for years, changed her name to Patricia, re-married, and was believed to have been murdered during the Tragedy of Duscur alongside her new husband, King Lambert Blaiddyd. Her body, he said, had never been recovered.

In the end, her feverish prayers to the Goddess had fallen upon deaf ears. No one had stepped in to save her, to save her siblings, to save her father's other consorts, to save her own mother. It was then that she resolved it would never happen again, that she would do anything to avert another tragedy like the one she and her family had suffered. She hadn't faltered, hadn't relented. And now, because of her efforts, Fhirdiad not only reminded her of the past but also of the Immaculate One in all of its terrible glory — of Rhea, who was ultimately the originator of her Crest, who was all but responsible for the Adrestian Empire and her family's 1,000 year-old dynasty. She doubted that she would ever forget yesterday.

The massive bonfire in the center of the castle square roared as Hubert's sorcery engineers continued to feed it salvage and its flames rose ever higher into the snow-filled, colorless sky. They worked quickly, as they knew they were being watched, to unload the wagons filled with half-charred wood and other burnable detritus.

As she watched the smoke drift towards the castle on the cliffs above them, Edelgard involuntarily shivered under her black, fur-lined cloak. A part of her was glad the war was finally over, but another, smaller part was . . . almost melancholic. As if she was watching 1,000 years of Fódlan's history go up with that smoke. There was a hollowness in her chest that she was unused to, and it was only worsened by the cold and the echoes of her unhappy past.

Idly, Edelgard reached out to pat her horse's neck, and readjusted her seat in the saddle. As she did so, the horse underneath her shook its head, as if sensing her unease.

Her eyes lingered on the cliffside castle behind the curtain of snow and smoke, and she felt a flash of gratitude that it at least had been spared from the war. Gratitude because, most important of all, Fhirdiad, and its somber castle, reminded her of Dima. Her first friend, her first _true_ friend. The lonely boy she had first spotted waiting patiently for the knights' return on the steps of the lowermost gatehouse, stacking pebbles into little towers while looking as dejected as she felt. It had been such a challenge to convince him to leave the gatehouse in order to play with her. Not unlike coaxing a timid puppy away from its mother. Dima, the sweet boy who had hesitatingly told her that he was the son of a kingdom noble living in the castle; who had gotten _so_ upset when she told him he looked like a girl; and who could (somehow) prattle on for hours about his stepmother, the castle knights, and occasional visits from his friends. Dima, the deceptively-strong-but-clumsy boy who she had stubbornly taught to dance (and later danced with at a ball for the royal family); who had become her reluctant guide around the city; who ended up breaking every tree branch and training sword he ever tried to duel her with; who had accidentally given her a black eye once and cried for her forgiveness the rest of the week; who had gifted her a dagger before she left. Dima, the first boy she had ever loved, who had taken her hand when she felt the most alone and vulnerable. Dima, _who had been Dimitri all along._

Thinking on it now, her hands clenched by themselves. _How?_ How could she have been so blind? How could she have blacked out so much of her own life?

In a way, perhaps she should be grateful that Dimitri's last words had shaken loose a few of her repressed memories from the darkest points in her life. As tinged as they were with sadness, they weren't all completely _bad_. Some even brought a smile. Still, she couldn't help but remember his snarling face as he kneeled in front of her in the mud with one silver lance jammed through the back of his leg and another buried in his back, his hate-filled blue eyes, and her own hesitation to do what she knew she must. He was the Tempest King, the King of Delusion, and she was the Flame Emperor, the source of every tragedy in his life. She stood as a betrayal against all that he was: his self, his faith, his family, his people, his country. Somehow, she had even turned his old friends against him. She knew Dimitri would never understand. He would not forgive. The things she had done . . . She did not even know if she would be able to forgive herself one day.

The accusations in those icy blue eyes haunted her now. They were always there, always watching, whether she was awake or asleep. Since Tailtean, her appetite had all but disappeared, and she knew she had no more excuses. She would need to remember to force herself to eat when they returned to camp later, if only to keep up her strength.

Edelgard exhaled deeply. _Oh,_ _Dima . . . How could I have possibly forgotten. . . .?_

As hard as she looked, there were no answers for her in the colorless sky or softly-falling snow.

Her eyes slid over to a row of stone townhouses that had taken the brunt of the Immaculate One's rampage, now little more than smoldering ruins. She stared at the collapsed townhouse on the end, with a large, blackened tree in its walled-in yard, and scowled at it.

The war had not even left that part of her childhood untouched, thanks to Rhea.

"Can I confess something to you, Hubert?" Edelgard asked suddenly. "In confidence?"

Beside her, she saw a mounted shadow stir slightly, unsettling the snow on his shoulders, while his jet-black horse's breath steamed in the air. "You need not even ask that of me. I would rather die than betray your secrets."

Hearing that, her frown deepened, and she turned her head to send him a mild look of disapproval. _I know you would, my dearest friend. Gladly, too. But if given the choice, I think I would rather choose you._

Instead, Edelgard bit her lip and said, "I knew that this would be highly unlikely, but I had hoped Rhea would surrender to our terms, or, failing that, we might have captured her instead. We could have enlisted her help against Those Who Slither in the Dark. I cannot help but think she would have made a valuable ally. I'm just . . . disappointed that we did not. As strange as that may sound." She scoffed. "I was the one who declared war on her and the Church of Seiros in the first place."

For a moment, Hubert stared at her without saying anything. "Hmm. You are far kinder to our enemies than they deserve. So, you wanted to spare the archbishop just as you and the Professor spared the Alliance's 'Master Tactician.' Is that really so difficult for you to believe?" he asked, chuckling dryly. "I suppose it isn't too surprising. After all, if those tawdry tales are to be believed, she was Emperor Wilhelm's lo—"

Somewhat annoyed, Edelgard tossed her head, dusting the snow off, and narrowed her eyes at him. "Speak of _facts_ , Hubert, not fiction. All that matters to me is the truth. Please don't mock me with such frivolous stories." _Especially not that one._ Somehow, impossibly, it only made her feel more guilty. If it was true. . . .

Hubert's pale green eyes glittered with amusement, but his smirk remained unchanged. "As you wish. But I do not think it strange you feel so strongly about this, given that she was your forebear. And by that, I do mean the progenitor for your family's _Crest_." He hissed the word as if it was a curse, or some greatly-hated thing. "And yet . . . perhaps these feelings should be expected. Regret is such a pure human emotion."

"I know that," said Edelgard firmly, looking down at her hands. "I do. There is still . . . a great deal we don't yet know about the Crests or how they interact with our bodies. But tell me honestly, Hubert: Do you feel the same? Could we have done anything differently? If so, we might have stopped all of this," she said, gesturing to the destruction all around them, "from happening. I feel . . . torn." She clenched her gauntleted hands. _I fear these stains can never be washed clean._

"No."

Edelgard glanced at him again, surprised by the edge in his voice, and this time, even his expression was hard, his mirth now gone. He looked like he was shaking, but she couldn't tell if it was from the cold or rage. Maybe both?

"Hubert? Please say something."

"As your vassal, my duty demands nothing less than the deaths of your enemies," he said stiffly, "and I will end them all gladly. I admit, I'm not sorry she's dead. I'm not sorry that any of them are dead. They present one less obstacle in the path that lies before you, which we have all fought tirelessly to advance. Given that, why should we fret over an impossibility? We cannot turn back the hands of time. Beyond that, I highly doubt the archbishop would have ever agreed to our terms. The woman was clearly mad."

"I see," she murmured. "Your words are quite telling. So, it is just me then." _How curious._

Somewhere deep within, Edelgard knew Hubert was right. She knew Rhea, like Dimitri, would never give up her long-held ideals, that her own remorse was misplaced, but the hollow feeling in her chest persisted. Could this too be blamed on the Crests? she wondered. Was this play upon her emotions their doing, after all? Where did they end and she begin? Or . . . were they an inseparable part of her now? Thinking that, she felt a stab of fear then a flash of anger, and she cursed them yet again. It seemed cruel that she could not even trust that her own emotions were real or fabricated.

Edelgard sighed. What would Byleth think about this entire ordeal? If anyone could understand her feelings, then it would be him. The Crest of Flames, and the Crest of Seiros, which Byleth's father, Jeralt, had borne . . .

This time, it was Hubert's turn to look at her curiously. His voice was soft, concerned. "Your Majesty?"

Shivering, she shook her head slightly and wished, not for the first time, that he would use her name rather than her title. There was no harm in it when they were nearly alone like this. "Hubert," she said, smiling sadly, "we've already discussed this. Several times, in fact."

"Forgive me — Lady Edelgard," he said, but she could tell he didn't mean it. "Are you cold? Would you like to borrow my cloak as well? You're shivering, and I would loathe myself if you fell ill."

Her smile twisted. "But then how would you stay warm, dearest friend? You look as cold as I feel."

"My welfare is a trifle and beneath your notice. You're the emperor of Fódlan now." He began to reach for his cloak's clasp. "It would be my honor to—"

The small explosion boomed without warning, startling them both as well as their horses, and the bonfire hissed and swelled, signaling to them that the fire must have finally reached the barrels of black powder Hubert's engineers had brought in by wagon and carefully laid out around the body of the Immaculate One. In a way, it was fitting: The powder was all that was left of the supreme armored corps Rhea herself had decimated.

"That's enough! Get back, all of you!" barked Hubert as he waved wildly to his sorcery engineers. "Go! _Now!"_

The engineers ran, stumbling over their robes and dropped pieces of salvage. They withdrew just in time before several more explosions rocked the square, more than doubling the size of the blaze and sending the nearby draft horses into a frenzy as they began to strain against their harnesses. Several of the mages went to them to calm them while the others stood motionless, watching in awe as the inferno swallowed the entire Immaculate One and wondering, as they all were, if the bodies of dragons were even vulnerable to fire. Even fires as large and fierce as theirs.

The fire was now so bright that Edelgard had to shield her eyes just to look at it even from a safe distance away. As she did, she felt another pang of regret that this was all she could offer a defeated foe. "This had better work," she muttered darkly. "I'm not sure what we should try if it doesn't." She glanced again at Hubert. "Are you certain there are no spells that might help? Thoron or miasma perhaps?"

Hubert shook his head slowly. "It's no good, I'm afraid. Magic was the first thing I tried. The scales are all but immune to it. To even have a hope of destroying the body with magic would require a great deal more time and mages than we have at present."

"We're already running out of time. My uncle is due to return to camp at any moment," said Edelgard, her expression darkening. She thought of the hero's relics, of Aymr as well as the Sword of the Creator, and how effective they had proven to be against the Immaculate One. Her stomach lurched when she thought of the gruesome butchery work _that_ would entail.

"It's a shame we couldn't simply move the body," she went on thoughtfully. "If only it was smaller, we could hide it in the convoy, take it with us back to Garreg Mach, and dispose of it properly in the Holy Tomb. Or we could conceal it in Abyss. I'm certain it wouldn't be the first time a body was hidden there."

Hubert frowned. "No doubt that would also require a great deal of effort, even if transporting the body was possible. But I suppose that is the question now, isn't it? How does one quickly disappear an entire dragon?"

"To be honest, I had hoped you might know," she sighed.

"I am terribly sorry to disappoint," Hubert replied dryly. "Let us hope the fire does its job well. If not, we'll just have to think of something else."

They fell into an uneasy silence. Eventually, Edelgard noticed that Hubert was staring at her. "I realize it could already be too late to ask this. But in case it doesn't work . . . are you certain about this?" he asked as he held out a hand towards the bonfire. "It strikes me as an awful waste."

"Hubert," she began, "I am quite certain. In the future we are building, there will be no place for Crests or hero's relics or demonic beasts. And I certainly don't want a resource such as this falling into the hands of our enemies. Our victory here must be absolute. Are you willing to accept that?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly, until Hubert smiled to himself and bowed his head. "As always, your resolve is admirable. Very well then. I will defer to your judgement, Lady Edelgard."

Pleased as she could be with that answer, Edelgard nodded to herself. She turned to face forward, and her eyes flickered one last time towards the formidable fortress on the cliffs above them.

Supposedly there was a place set aside for her mother in the Blaiddyd family crypt beneath the castle. Edelgard wondered briefly if she should try to find it and pay her respects. If it would be too out of line for her to visit the grave of the stepfather she had only met a few times. They were family, but . . . would it even be appropriate? It was said that King Lambert had been a kind and just man. Still, she thought, it would probably be a bad idea. After all, it was her fault that the crypt would have another Blaiddyd added to it in the coming days.

The last of the Blaiddyd line, save for one if she wasn't mistaken.

She returned her eyes to the fire in front of her. Together, they watched the detritus burn, a bonfire Hubert and his men had spent all morning building, charred wood from unburnt dwellings and broken carts piled high in front of the castle her own mother had once called home. As they watched in silence, the flames rose higher, licking at the shimmering, white scales of the beast who had controlled Fódlan and kept it in the dark for far too long.

Ultimately, they did learn one thing from the experience: Even dead dragons, it seemed, were all but impervious to fire. _Immaculate_ One, indeed.

The uneventful ride back to camp carried with it the air of defeat. The more the snow fell, weighing down their shoulders, the harder the gears turned in Edelgard's mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second part as promised. Not gonna lie, I really struggled with this one and hate it as a result. I might return to it one day just to improve the ending, which feels abrupt/unfinished. For now though, I just want to stop looking at it. I've also decided to give in to the stupid forced chapter numbering for the sake of consistency.
> 
> I gave Lord Kleiman a name, and I definitely took some liberties here with Dimitri, Edelgard, and Rhea. Please be aware I am willfully ignoring the fact Dimitri said he and his father first met Edelgard and Arundel "at their residence" (because... why would a king do that? Guests/supplicants go to the king, not the other way around). Also, Dimitri claims he and Edelgard were only friends "for a little over a year" when Edelgard was apparently in Fhirdiad for three according to the game's time-line. Make of that as you wish.
> 
> Again, great thanks to the awesome redditors who helped me brainstorm. Part of this chapter is based on that one lecture question post-TS Edelgard has, Omegaxis1's theory about Crests on the main Fire Emblem subreddit, and, IIRC, that one "story" you can find in Abyss's library. Third part coming soon with more Edelgard and Byleth.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please comment or leave a kudos if you can! Each one seriously makes my day and tells me I'm doing something right lol. Haven't been feeling well lately so I could definitely use the boost.
> 
> TL;DR Edelgard and Hubert attempt to deal with the Immaculate One and head off Those Who Slither in the Dark.


	6. Pull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: none.
> 
> Chapter Tags: post-canon; angst; friendship; hurt/comfort; pining; dialogue; M!Byleth; Edelgard von Hresvelg; Dorothea Arnault; Dorothea Arnault/Petra MacNeary; Lorenz/Marianne (very brief).

# Chapter Six:

#  ~~(The)~~ Pull ~~(Of You)~~

1 Harpstring Moon, 1186

By the time Byleth heard that Hubert and Edelgard had returned, heavily-bundled men and women were already making their rounds around camp, lighting braziers, campfires, lanterns, and torches for the long night ahead. Imperial soldiers, unused to Faerghus’s mid-spring snowstorms, took refuge inside tents and covered areas, but their mounts were not so lucky: shaggy horses and pegasi huddled together for warmth in their temporary paddocks while wyverns instinctively buried themselves in the snow to wait for the thaw. It was Ingrid who gave the order to increase the nightly watch, assigning the extra guards to the camp’s entrances, Edelgard’s pavilion, and the makeshift stockade on the camp’s outskirts, where Leonie and Felix had been corralling the church and kingdom prisoners.

The evening snowfall seemed almost Goddess-sent as it fell thick and heavy, doing its best to smother what remained of Fhirdiad’s fires. As the last of the light faded from the sky and the temperature continued to drop, the softly-falling snow of the afternoon gave way over time to a proper blizzard.

Still, as life slowed to a half-frozen crawl, everyone in camp knew to count their blessings wherever they could. The situation was even more dire in the scattered refugee camps that had sprung up around them and within Fhirdiad, despite Ferdinand, Yuri, and Lorenz’s noblest efforts to locate and hand out whatever supplies could be spared. 

Byleth and Dorothea had only just finished making evening rounds of their own — checking in on their former classmates, students, and colleagues as they trickled back in from the ravaged city with exhausted and smoke-blackened faces — when they wandered into the covered mess area to escape the cold and see what the cooks were serving for supper. He and the songstress both grabbed a wooden bowl of stew and a misshapen lump of hardtack before they laid claim to a couple of benches beside a lit brazier.

Glancing around, Byleth saw that they weren’t the only ones with the same idea. Far from it. Soldiers and civilians alike sat in gloomy silence as they ate, listening to the howling of the wind as it battered the canvas overhead. He noticed Lorenz, Marianne, and Sylvain were also there, tucked away in a cozy corner while they chatted quietly, with Sylvain’s mop of red hair a dead giveaway. And as she nestled her head against Lorenz’s shoulder, Marianne clutched his hand tightly under the table. Over by the impromptu bar and barrels of beer, Shamir, Leonie, Balthus, Hapi, and Alois seemed to be in better spirits, loudly drowning their sorrows in tankards, dice, and (in Hapi’s case at least) sarcasm.

Mouth twisting, Byleth looked down at the floating chunks of venison and potato in his bowl before he dug into it in earnest. 

Dorothea, with melting snowflakes in her hair, crinkled her nose at him while she slowly picked apart her lump of hardtack. “I admit it’s wonderful to see you eating like yourself again,” she said, sounding slightly concerned, “but, I swear, Professor, you eat almost as much as Raphael. Can’t you . . . I don’t know, slow down or something? You were practically comatose this morning.”

Byleth paused for a moment, considering. “No way. My poor muscles are still crying out to be fed,” he replied, completely straight-faced as he shoveled another large spoonful into his mouth. As if to prove his point, his stomach growled loudly, still unhappy with him for missing several meals due to the events of the past few days.

Dorothea rolled her eyes at him. “Hmm. I see your . . . unique sense of humor is just fine at least. Luckily for you, I’ve had worse dates. Well, a lot of them actually.”

When he raised an eyebrow at her, her lips curled upwards into a smirk to show her jab at him was harmless. He smiled a little to himself too; he thought it had been a good Raphael impersonation at least.

Byleth’s eyes were drawn away as a weary group of mages wandered into the mess area. “I’m just making up for lost time,” he told her between spoonfuls. Then he grabbed his hardtack and dunked the entire thing into the stew to soften it up before he took a bite. “Anyway, what’s wrong with having a healthy appetite?”

 _“Healthy?”_ Dorothea repeated, choking back a laugh. Briefly, her eyes flickered towards the mages as well before they returned, settling on him with a searching look. “You aren’t being serious, are you? Sometimes I can’t tell.”

Byleth shrugged and continued eating, periodically throwing glances at the snow-blasted newcomers as they passed by and lined up near the simmering cauldrons of stew. He recognized the maroon Vestra insignia on their robes, knowing, wherever his sorcery engineers were, Hubert was sure to be nearby. 

“I’m glad there are some things about you that will always stay the same, Professor,” she murmured with a half-smile. “It’s reassuring . . . in a weird kind of way.”

Byleth nodded slightly, distractedly, but didn’t say a word.

When he didn’t answer, Dorothea wrinkled her brow and followed his gaze again. This time, the songstress also seemed to recognize the mages, and she shared a curious look with him as they fell silent, trying to listen in on the strangers over the howling wind and drone of everyone else. Before long, one of them, shaking his head, sniped something about Hubert presumably and “burning a great bloody dragon on a pyre.”

Hearing that, Byleth frowned, his thoughts immediately racing to the Immaculate One. Was this what Hubert had meant by “arrangements”? Was this the important matter Edelgard and he had wanted to take care of?

“Huh,” said Dorothea. “It sounds like Edie and Hubie are finally back.”

“That it does,” he agreed, looking at her pointedly. 

“Oh, all right,” she sighed, still smiling at him. “There’s no need to pout! You can go. I was just thinking about turning in for the night anyway before this storm gets any worse.” 

Byleth stuffed his mouth with the rest of the hardtack and quickly set to work finishing his stew.

Lost in thought, Dorothea touched a braid of her hair then sighed again. “But before I do that . . . I could probably use Petra’s help to remove these braids. It’ll be nice to be able to brush my hair again. Hmm. . . .” She ate a few, half-hearted spoonfuls of her own stew as he finished his, and when she looked up at him, resting her head on a hand, there was a devilish glint in her emerald green eyes. “After everything that’s happened these past few days, this kind of weather just makes you want to curl up in a warm bed with the one you love, doesn’t it, Professor?”

“You think so?” Byleth asked evasively, feigning ignorance. _Not this again,_ he thought. Lately, the songstress seemed to be quite interested in his love life, which was strange, considering her own burgeoning closeness with the Brigid princess. But he didn’t have time for her suggestive remarks today. He disentangled himself from the bench to stand and grabbed his now-empty bowl.

Dorothea winked at him. “Oh, and give Edie my love, won’t you?”

“Only if you give Petra mine,” he returned, giving her a hard, knowing look that said he knew what she was doing.

Somehow, impossibly, her smirk widened into a full-blown grin. “But of course,” she said with a lazy flourish. “That’s awfully sweet of you, Professor.”

He gave her a wan half-smile of his own. “Thank you for today, Dorothea. Have a good night.”

“You too, Professor.”

Byleth left his wooden bowl on the dish-washing pile and grabbed another bowl of stew to go on his way out before he hurried to Edelgard’s pavilion in the center of camp. He was more than a little ready to crawl into his bedroll, but this matter couldn’t wait until morning. His mind was filled with questions. He had to see her. He had to know. 

He nodded to the two heavily-bundled guards flanking either side of her tent’s entrance, wearing thick, blood-red cloaks over their black and gold armor, and pushed inside. He found her sitting at her desk with a fur cloak wrapped around her shoulders and staring intensely at a letter while the light from the lit braziers danced across the interior. She had already taken off her war crown and let her silvery hair down for the night.

“Do you ever rest?” he asked, half-joking.

As she looked up from her letter, brows knotted, her expression visibly brightened when she saw it was only him. “Me? Rest?” she chuckled darkly. “Of course not. I swear, the work is never-ending. I had to order Hubert to retire for the night. He and Ferdinand have both been invaluable help, but there’s still so much to do. So much to plan. Enemies to fight. Two capitals to rebuild. Alliances to secure.” She sighed. “And war certainly isn’t cheap.”

Several faces flashed through Byleth’s mind, and a knot formed in his throat. He breathed deeply, tried to swallow it down. “It never is,” he agreed softly. “In lives or gold.”

With a frown, she stared at him, all traces of amusement gone. “Professor, I . . . It’s regrettable,” she said, “but it was the only way. It is these sacrifices that will allow us to create a future where we never need sacrifice again.”

He thought again of Sothis, and an invisible knife twisted in his chest painfully. _Was it? Was there really no better way?_

As the taste of bile filled his mouth, he felt a flash of anger towards the Goddess for taking his choice away. Then he remembered Sothis’s words. About fate, about _her_. Maybe, as much as he railed against the idea, choice really was just an illusion, in the end.

“Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “I’m sorry. I don’t regret walking this path with you. I just wish we could have found a way to spare the others too.”

She nodded. “I understand. A part of me knows that feeling well. Since this war began, there have been countless casualties, allies and enemies alike. We lost Randolph and Ladislava. Dimitri and Rhea. To be honest with you . . . The weight of that burden is crushing me.”

The sadness in her lilac eyes was palpable as she stared off into space. Suddenly, strangely, she looked lost and alone, more like his student of old than the peerless emperor of today. Byleth didn’t like seeing her like this; it reminded him too much of the vulnerable girl with the sad smile, whom he had failed the most his first life. He tried to think of something reassuring to say — Maybe something that would make her smile? he thought, scrambling — but his mind was blank, and the words wouldn’t come.

Then again, words alone could not change the past. 

Briefly, Byleth closed his eyes and saw Dimitri, his eyes wild with rage and snarling at them like a wounded animal until the last, before he was left lying on the Tailtean Plains. Dedue, grunting in pain as the glowing crest stone slowly swallowed him whole from his hand outwards, leaving a titanic, writhing beast in his place. He remembered his grip on the Sword of the Creator going slack, he remembered feeling _surprised_. Then nothing as other Faerghus knights began to transform, one by one, across the battlefield just before they tore into the imperial forces with howls.

Maybe it was on him. All of it. His fault for being too cautious, for spreading himself too thin.

Three lives he had lived before this one, and neither he nor Sothis had been able to find a way to reconcile Edelgard and Dimitri with their ghosts. Time itself had been his greatest limitation. Get too close to one, he learned, and the other warily closed themselves off. Get to close to Rhea, and Edelgard and Hubert both treated him with thinly-veiled suspicion. Not to mention there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to win over everyone he cared about at Garreg Mach. Now, robbed of Sothis and the Divine Pulse, he would never know if there had been a way to avert the war altogether. His mouth twisted as he fumbled again for the Divine Pulse and felt nothing.

_There can be no going back now. It’s too late for regrets like ours._

His one consolation was that, in a past life, he _had_ seen Dimitri and Dedue live. As archbishop, he had watched them marry, grow old, and die natural deaths, and that was more than Edelgard had ever gotten. Now, it was her turn. Find a purpose, Sothis had said, and he could do that much at least. He would devote his last life to giving her a happy ending. To fixing the mistakes he had made in the past. Thinking now on his first life, he knew he could do a lot worse. 

“Here,” he said, awkwardly remembering what he was carrying, before he handed her the wooden bowl. “I, er, brought you something, just in case you were hungry. I would have brought Bergamot as well if we had any. We’ll have to stock back up when we return to the monastery.”

Byleth knew it was a measly meal compared to what they normally enjoyed at Garreg Mach and hardly befitting an emperor, but it was the best they could expect to find in a military encampment.

Edelgard accepted it sheepishly. “This is more than enough for now. Thank you, my teacher,” she mumbled as she began to pick at the stew. “It seems I am once again in your debt.”

“Mhmm,” he hummed, crossing his arms across his chest as he stared into a nearby brazier’s flames. He knew she was the kind of student who skipped meals before exams, and the stress was all too real now. When it was just the two of them like this, alone, it was difficult to remember the terrible things she had been capable of doing in his other lives. Rhea’s torture from his first life. The burning of Gronder Field and Bernadetta’s dying screams from the second. And the Hegemon’s monstrous face sprang to mind easily as she crushed him into the tiled floor between her talons, her eyes glaring at him like two red-hot coals with barely-contained fury, alongside the words she said to him five years ago: _“If I were alone, I might have lost perspective and become a harsh ruler with a heart of ice.”_

Compared to past three versions, this Edelgard was kinder, more patient, and open to jokes as well as criticism. He liked to think that this was his influence at work but knew the other members of the Black Eagle Strike Force had played a part in it too. Still, he had missed her so much after his first life. Missed the lessons and missions they planned together, and their combined efforts to rein in the bizarre personalities of the other Black Eagles just to ensure they could cooperate. The sparring sessions and the Black Eagle pendant she had given him.

And Edelgard, it seemed, had missed him as well to a degree, without knowing why. It was the only explanation he could think of for the things she had told him in past lives, commenting on his _“strange aura”_ as she always called it, and the way she had insisted upon attending his every lecture and seminar she could just to get close enough to him with her cautiously scrutinizing gaze. As if she was thinking hard to figure out why he seemed so familiar. “Have you and your father ever been to Enbarr, Professor?” she had always, _always_ asked. “It’s strange, but I feel as though we’ve met before . . .” It had been difficult sometimes to watch from afar and feign ignorance, pretending that none of it had ever happened. 

“By the way,” Byleth said suddenly, jerking his head towards the folding screens that had been moved to hide her bed from view, “thank you for lending me your bed. It was a kind gesture. But if there’s still so much to do, you didn’t have to wait by my bedside. I would have understood.”

Edelgard’s hand froze, spoon poised at her lips. “I admit I . . . had my reasons,” she said slowly.

“Such as?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I was worried about you,” she said, her cheeks reddening. “Although, to be honest, I suppose I wanted to ensure you woke up this time. Five years feels like an eternity to live with a broken heart. I can’t afford to lose you like that again.”

“That’s fair,” he said, shaking his head, “but Manuela and Dorothea were right about one thing.”

Her lilac eyes were still wary. “And what is that?”

“You can’t neglect yourself, Edelgard,” he told her softly. “Not for Fódlan. And not for me.” For a moment, he felt like her professor again rather than her battlefield tactician, scolding her for failing to take care of herself. It was not a new conversation; he’s had the same one countless times with Annette, Petra, and Lysithea across lifetimes. Even been scolded for doing the same by Mercedes and Raphael.

Edelgard lowered her spoon to give him a sidelong stare. “That’s . . . not a promise I can make, Professor. As much as I want to, I have always believed that a wise ruler’s duty is to their people first and foremost, and now is not the time for self-indulgence.”

“Ah, but how can you lead Fódlan wisely if you continuously work yourself to the point of exhaustion?” he asked evenly. “A clear, unburdened mind is what makes the most rational decisions, does it not?” 

“True,” she said with a small smile. “Not even Hubert could fault your logic.” Her eyes were level with his own, but she did look a little sheepish. For a moment, he even thought she might just tell him what he wanted to hear, but he was wrong. “I will try,” she said softly, sounding genuine, “but I am not the only one who requires convincing, I’m afraid.”

“Leave Hubert to me,” Byleth said, smiling back at her. “Good. Then that’s settled. What are you working on?”

“This letter came while I was away,” Edelgard told him absently, gesturing towards the unoffending piece of parchment now lying on her desk. “It’s from my uncle. He’s written to say that he and his reinforcements won’t be returning to our army for a few days due to the storm.” Her expression darkened. “Ugh, he’s a detestable creature that loves his comforts. I was considering drafting a response just as you walked in.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Byleth asked. “That gives us some time to prepare until we are ready to finally confront him.”

“Yes, I agree. It’s definitely a blessing for now. Although . . . I might have almost preferred it if he was here, where we could keep an eye on him. If I know him at all, he has to be plotting something now that the war is effectively over. . . .” She trailed off thoughtfully. “Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ask: Did Manuela or Hanneman learn what happened to you? Why you collapsed?” she asked breezily, changing the subject.

“Yes. Hanneman believes I no longer bear the Crest of Flames.” He paused, his voice lowering. “And I think he’s right.”

Without warning, Edelgard’s spoon fell into the bowl with a clatter. She stared at him incredulously. “What? How? Is that even possible?”

For a moment, Byleth hesitated. He knew why she asked, but he wondered if the answer would in fact be helpful. “When I was born,” he began slowly, choosing each word carefully, “I was stillborn. My dying mother begged Rhea to save me, so Rhea implanted a Crest stone into my chest, and it worked. I lived. But until now, I have never had a heartbeat.”

“That’s . . . remarkable,” said Edelgard. “Who told you this?”

Byleth sighed. “Rhea herself.”

“I see,” she said, leaning back in her chair. He could practically see the gears turning in her head. “So that is how you were able to wield the Sword of the Creator. And when we defeated the Immaculate One, it must have . . . broken the Crest stone in your chest somehow, triggering your transformation.”

Again, Byleth hesitated. “That seems as good a theory as any.”

“So, it was this Crest stone she must have been referring to when she said that she wanted to take back your heart,” she went on, looking contemplative. Then Edelgard glanced at him for a moment, guiltily, and her eyes almost looked sorrowful. “I’m so sorry, Byleth. If I had known how close you would come to dying, I would have tried harder to . . .”

_It wasn’t your fault._

“It’s okay,” he offered. “You didn’t know. And I didn’t die. All is forgiven.”

She shook her head, put the spoon in the bowl, and pushed it away.

“But speaking of the Immaculate One,” he began, “Dorothea and I heard some . . . interesting rumors tonight.”

“Yes, I suppose I should tell you about that,” Edelgard said, sounding frustrated. “Hubert and I tried to dispose of the Immaculate One’s body, but it didn’t work. The scales appear to be all but immune to fire and destructive magic. Tomorrow, we’re going to have to think of something else. Hubert assigned a battalion to guard it overnight, and that’ll have to do for now.”

Byleth nodded to himself. “I assume to keep her from falling into the hands of those who slither in the dark.”

“Yes, exactly,” she sighed. “Besides, we couldn’t just leave a body of that size within the city. For . . . obvious reasons.”

“Dragons aren’t so easy to get rid of. I’ll . . . have to think about that one,” he said, yawning. With his curiosity satisfied, his fatigue seemed to hit him all at once. His lips curled into a frayed smile. “It’s getting late. I’m going back to my tent. Please try to get some rest as well. Your uncle’s letter can wait.” He turned to leave, already thinking about how wonderful it would feel to curl up inside his bedroll. It wouldn’t feel as wonderful as sleeping in a real bed, of course, but his exhaustion could help with that.

“Byleth, wait. I . . .”

Hearing the hesitation in her voice, he turned back to look at her. She had stood up from her chair and was walking towards him slowly, biting her lip as if she wanted to say something but then decided against it. She stopped in front of him and stuck out a gauntleted hand. “I wanted to thank you again. Properly this time. For believing in me. For believing in my cause.”

Slowly, so slowly, Byleth took her hand and shook it. “You are my student,” he said, smiling slightly. “As a professor, it’s my job to believe in you.”

“I . . . see. Given that, I suppose you’re right,” she agreed awkwardly. “I will try to get some rest. I promise.” She smiled at him to show she meant it. 

As always, Byleth once again marveled at how short she truly was when they stood side by side like this. Her peerless emperor persona seemed untouchable, irreproachable, so larger than life, especially wielding her hero’s relic with such ease, but here she stood, with the top of her head at his eye level.

How could someone so small be so fierce?

As he peered down at her oval-shaped face, framed by long, silvery tresses that fell all the way to the middle of her back, and traced the outlines of her straight nose, lilac eyes, and curled lips, something stirred in his chest. Something new and primal. Her rosy perfume was all he could smell. He wanted to kiss her, he realized with some alarm. And it would be so easy, so _right_ , his body whispered, to just lean down and press his lips to hers—

“Professor?” she said softly, sounding both confused and amused. “You can let go of my hand.”

He dropped her hand as if he’d been burnt and, stiffening, nodded. “Right. Goodnight, Edelgard.”

“Goodnight, my teacher,” she sighed, watching him go.

A blast of freezing cold air was the only thing that awaited him after he pushed aside the flap and quickly retreated outside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [8/21/20 Update: Sadly, I will NOT be posting a new chapter for "Four Letter Words" this month (August). I'm kind of homeless right now, living in a relative's guest room, and I've been scouting out apartments forty minutes away so I can be closer to my new job. COVID-19 is not helping with this at all. But I'll make it up to you guys eventually.]
> 
> FLW's last chapter for this month, as promised. I hope this one somehow makes up for the last chapter. The title is a reference to "The Pull of You" by The National, which is a great song for FLW's Byleth/Edelgard.
> 
> I don't think I'll be able to deliver on the Azure Moon chapter of "Ends" this month, unfortunately. I overestimated myself and honestly struggled a lot with the dialogue in this month's chapters because dialogue isn't my forte. I think I'm going to take it easy for the rest of July and then prioritize "Ends" for August. So there may or may not be a "Four Letter Words" chapter in August due to some burn-out and personal stuff. Honestly, I want to finish the last two chapters of "Ends" and then start going back over "Four Letter Words" to improve past chapters for consistency, etc., because I still think the ones so far still need some work. And I work best as a writer once I've had some time away from whatever I'm working on. 
> 
> Yeah... I don't think I'm going to write over 12,000+ words in a single month ever again lol. Luckily for me, I already have a lot of future chapters half- or partially-written. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please don't forget to comment or leave a kudos if you can! They are kind of the best encouragement you can give if you're enjoying the story...
> 
> TL;DR Byleth spends some time de-stressing with Dorothea and checks in on Edelgard after the battle.


	7. Free Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: canon character death; illness; vomiting.
> 
> Chapter Tags: angst; friendship; hurt/comfort; dialogue; M!Byleth; Jeralt Eisner; Ashe Ubert.

# Chapter Seven:

# Free Fall

In one fluid motion, Jeralt swung off his horse, Stranger, and shook his rain-soaked head before moving his lance to rest against his pauldron. He reached out his free hand to squeeze his son’s shoulder. When their gazes met, his honeyed eyes were filled with worry.

“You okay?”

Byleth nodded. He was still shaking off last month’s mysterious illness, but today’s battle had gone surprisingly well, all things considered. Nearly a week had passed since his last dizzy spell. If anything, he was slowly getting better just by taking it easy a day at a time.

Jeralt liked that answer, rewarding him with a tight-lipped smile and another squeeze. “Good job, kid,” he said, his breath steaming in the wet, wintery air. “Looks like we saved everyone we could.”

Hearing that, a warmth filled Byleth’s chest, and he nodded again. It felt good to be fighting alongside the Blade Breaker again, just like old times. The nostalgia was overpowering. There were days when he missed the mercenary life and nights he dreamed of returning to it. Times he regretted allowing himself to be roped into teaching because the noble students of the Officers’ Academy were especially foreign to him due to their obsession with Crests and titles. When they first arrived at the monastery, many of the students had ogled him and Jeralt like they were exotic beasts from Morfis or Dagda, so a glimpse of their old lives, no matter how temporary, was a welcome reprieve. The only thing missing now was the rest of the Company.

Having left the Black Eagles in Edelgard’s capable hands, he could hear their voices somewhere off in the distant fog, healing the injured students from the other classes and coordinating their search for stragglers. In all honesty, he wasn’t too worried; it was eerily quiet now that the demonic beasts had been dealt with, and Alois was sure to be on his way with reinforcements. Soon, the outer perimeter of the monastery would look like a kicked hornets’ nest, swarming with the Knights of Seiros.

Jeralt released Byleth’s shoulder with a sigh of exasperation and stalked a short distance away, only to rub his jaw and stare at the uniformed body lying in the grass. “First Remire, now this. Why were students gathering all the way out here? And what in the world were demonic beasts doing within the monastery’s outer walls? None of this makes any sense.”

Byleth followed his father’s gaze and peered down at the dead girl, who he vaguely remembered was one of the Golden Deer. “The demonic beasts were students.”

_Transformed. Just like Miklan._

“Yeah,” said Jeralt darkly. “I have a theory about that.” He shook his head. “What a nightmare. I’ll have to post additional guards around the monastery, reopen an investigation, and search the Holy Tomb to see if anything was taken. Seteth and Rhea are going to be furious.” He shook his head again, this time in frustration. “I’m going to need a drink after this. The stronger, the better.”

“What if Solon and Jeritza weren’t acting alone?” Byleth asked suddenly. “What if they still have allies within the monastery?”

“Then we’ll have our work cut out for us,” Jeralt sighed, voice heavy. “I’m going to check the chapel for evidence,” he continued, jerking his thumb towards the crumbling building half-swallowed by overgrown vegetation and fog. “Who knows, maybe we’ll even get lucky for once. You wait here for the others.”

Again, Byleth nodded. “Let me know if you need any help.”

Jeralt didn’t even stop or turn around. “Don’t worry,” he said as he walked away, “you’ll be the first to know if I run into any trouble.”

With a small smile, Byleth went to Stranger’s side and grabbed ahold of the horse’s reins. The gentle gelding nudged his hand, pushing repeatedly with his velvety nose until Byleth began to pet it absentmindedly. His fingers lingered on the misshapen star on the horse’s nose, as they had dozens of times in the past.

 _Who is the Flame Emperor?_ he wondered again, for what must have been the hundredth time. _And are they involved in this too, somehow?_

It certainly seemed like it. But if Sothis heard him, she didn’t answer. Byleth wasn’t surprised; she had been quieter than usual lately and was probably resting again. For whatever reason, the illness seemed to be affecting her just as much as it was affecting him, and she had been sleeping more since they fell ill.

It was a bleak way for Ethereal Moon to end, in starkest contrast to the month’s earlier festivities: The White Heron Cup, Garreg Mach’s grand ball, and Sothis’s teasing that Edelgard, as well as a few other students, had been watching him like a hawk all night—

His father had almost reached the chapel when it’s doors were thrown open wide, and another student came stumbling out into the freezing downpour.

“W-wait!”

Byleth blinked in surprise. It was Monica. The bright, bubbly girl they had rescued alongside Flayn and the Black Eagles’ newest addition, who followed Edelgard like a shadow wherever she went, made excuses whenever he tried to broach her grades or classwork, and insisted on brewing a few cups of tea for him out of nowhere last month. “A recipe from home,” she’d said, with an earthy, bitter taste. First as a ‘thank you’ for freeing her, then later as a remedy to help alleviate the illness. He would recognize her fiery red hair anywhere, and he briefly wondered what one of his own Eagles could be doing all the way out here, in the icy rain and outside of the monastery’s inner bailey, without a cloak or mittens. Luckily, she appeared unharmed. 

Jeralt grabbed one of the girl’s shoulders to steady her. “Hey now,” he said gently, “Are you hurt? Was anyone else in there with you?”

Monica shook her head, and her wet hair went flying. “N-no, sir!” she told him, sounding less bubbly than usual. Byleth could hardly hear what they were saying over the sound of the rain.

Throwing Byleth a quick glance, as if he had recognized her as one of his Eagles, Jeralt let go of her. “You should get back to the monastery before you freeze. It’s not safe here. Run along now.”

“Thanks for all your help, sir,” Monica said, smiling at him as she started to skip away towards the gate to the monastery’s inner bailey. 

But before Byleth could even think to act, to call out a warning, she stopped abruptly behind Jeralt while his back was still turned. Byleth saw the flash of metal as she pulled something from her uniform, saw her jam whatever it was into Jeralt’s lower back, saw his father collapse to his knees as Monica leaned over him to whisper into his ear.

Stranger pawed the ground and tried to back away, but Byleth made no move to calm him. His grip on the reins had turned to iron. He was stunned, rooted to the spot, and he could do nothing but watch in wordless horror as Monica shoved his father off her knife and turned to face him, her crimson eyes glaring with something that looked like amusement.

“Are you surprised, Professor? I have a message for you,” she chortled. “The Flame Emperor sends his regards.”

Byleth heard the words from a distant, faraway place, drowned out by the sound of the rain and the blood pounding in his ears. His world shrank to just the two figures in front of him, closed in by the fog, and he was not even aware of the first time he activated the Divine Pulse until reality shattered. Then the seconds slid by in reverse, and he was forced to watch it happen again: watch Monica turn back to his father, plunge the knife back in, pull it out, return it to her uniform, and circle around Jeralt. He released the Divine Pulse, and time began to jerk forward with such a sickening lurch that it made his stomach curl. 

“—for all your help, sir.”

This time, without hesitating, Byleth dropped Stranger’s reins as if he’d been burnt, removed the Sword of the Creator from his belt, and lunged. The sword unraveled towards the unaware girl as she removed a gleaming object from her uniform and spun around—

Only for a strange-looking man with unnaturally pale skin and snow-white hair to appear in front of her with a burst of purple-black light. He parried the sword easily with a single stroke of his own blade. Steel clashed against bone, and the sword’s tip fell uselessly to the ground.

 _“No!”_ roared Byleth as the dagger went in again. His father made a clumsy swipe at his killer and collapsed.

Startled, Monica jumped back and nearly dropped the knife when she whirled around, only to glance between Byleth, the man, and the unraveled Sword of the Creator lying at his feet. “Huh?” she said, sounding annoyed. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“You must survive,” growled the man without looking away. “Merely because there is still a role that I require you to fulfill.” He seized Monica by the wrist, and they disappeared with another burst of sickly light.

Again, Byleth activated the Divine Pulse. Time reversed, and this time he held it longer before he released it.

“—W-wait!”

He didn’t care if it looked cold-blooded. He didn’t even care if it looked like outright murder. For the first time in his life, he could peek behind the curtain, peer through a crack in the façade, and the feeling that surged through was so _intense_ . The blood was boiling in his veins now, and he could think of nothing but Monica. He wanted to stop her, make her suffer, _make her bleed,_ force her to relive every stab, every ounce of anguish and pain she had tried to inflict by taking away the one person he loved and could not bear to lose.

With a snarl, Byleth dropped the reins, pulled the sword from his belt, raised it high above his head before he wrenched it forward, almost like casting a fishing line. The sword unraveled, careening skywards before gravity brought it down again in a sweeping arc, and for one second, it looked like it would split Monica in two before she could reach Jeralt. But the man merely reappeared in midair, smacked the tip away from its intended target with his sword, and then landed on his feet with surprising ease.

This time, Monica saw all this happen, and she looked momentarily stunned before she recovered, quickly pulled the dagger, ducked under Jeralt’s reflexive swing at her with his lance, and stabbed him in the gut before he could properly react. She stabbed him once, twice, three times in quick succession before he shoved her away and staggered. 

Byleth howled. Again, he activated the Divine Pulse, and when he released, his breathing was ragged, his head was swimming, and he was somehow seeing double. When he blinked, he saw not one, but two Sothises floating in front of him, their green eyes wide with concern.

“You fool! What are you doing!?” they shrieked. But it was already too late; all he could see, over their shoulders, were the two Monicas, stumbling out of the chapel. Time seemed to slow of its own accord as his vision stabilized.

“W-wait!”

This time, he didn’t bother with a sword at all. Overcome with a white-hot, blinding rage, he dropped Stranger’s reins and clenched his jaw. He pushed himself into a dead sprint, swerving past Sothis and towards Monica, whose crimson eyes widened with shock and something that looked a lot like fear. He would pummel her and the man with his bare hands if he had to.

Blood for blood, he would make her pay. He would make them all pay. Jeritza, Solon, Monica, the man, and the Flame Emperor himself.

When Jeralt heard him coming, he whirled around, looking surprised. “Byleth, what in the world are you—?”

Anticipating an attack, Byleth ran as swiftly as he could, but he was still no match for the man. In a split second, the man materialized right in front of him and snatched Byleth off his feet by the throat. The man lifted him up and started to squeeze. As his nails dug into the tender flesh, Byleth hung limply in the air, glaring at him through the pain in heartfelt contempt.

Fury began to bleed into panicked desperation. This close, Byleth could see the milky whites of the man’s eyes and thin black veins criss-crossing beneath his skin. Like Solon, he didn’t even look human. The man sneered up at him while his grip tightened, and Byleth began to gasp for air.

“Hey! Let go of him!” Jeralt shouted at the man, and Byleth watched as his father started running back, running towards them, only for his face to contort with sudden pain, stabbed once again in the back by Monica. As the edges of his vision blackened, Byleth saw his father fall forward onto the icy grass.

“Foolish boy, what were you hoping to accomplish?” the man asked, chuckling. “You animals are all the same. Predictable and so very pathetic,” he said, before throwing Byleth against a nearby wall with almost superhuman strength.

With a grunt, Byleth slammed into the wall and lay still, breathing heavily. His entire body was shaking. He rubbed his bruised throat and stared at the man and Monica. Byleth stared at them hard before they teleported away, trying to commit the man and his pitch-black armor to memory. He felt so weak and light-headed, and when he pulled his hand away from his throat, it came away bloody. Sothis was by his side within the blink of an eye, with her hands planted firmly on her hips.

“Byleth, what were you even thinking!?”

“No, I have to—I can’t—”

“Just look at yourself! Even the Divine Pulse has its limits, and you are in no state to—”

Byleth stopped listening. In that moment, he didn’t care what Sothis had to say. He didn’t care if he was exhausted. He didn’t care what would happen to him if he pushed the Divine Pulse too far. He activated it again, felt it sapping away what little energy he had left. He continued to hold it until Jeralt was halfway to the chapel and Monica was seconds away from throwing open the door.

The instant time resumed, he launched himself into a shambling run, but Sothis was already waiting for him, blocking the way to Jeralt. “You are going to get us both killed!”

“Stop!” Byleth cried, and sprinted right through her as if she was just a plume of smoke. _“Stop!”_

Startled, Jeralt spun around and was barely able to catch Byleth before he collapsed. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding shaken. “Why are you—? Byleth, what in the world’s gotten into you? You seemed fine just—”

Byleth seized fistfuls of his father’s heavy surcoat. “Don’t . . .” he said between breaths. “She’s going to . . . kill you. . . .”

“Who is?”

There was a burst of sickly light before Jeralt’s startled expression shifted to one of half-realized horror. He slumped forward, into his son’s arms, and when Byleth looked down, he found a fist-sized crater where his father’s chest cavity used to be.

A primal scream ripped its way out of his throat.

Over Jeralt’s shoulder, Byleth saw the man standing with Monica just before the two swiftly disappeared with a blast of light. Rallying the last of his strength, Byleth activated the Divine Pulse and felt the seconds start to slide by, only to feel Sothis tug back hard. Time came to a grinding halt.

“I am so sorry, little one,” whispered Sothis, her voice breaking in his ear, “but I will _not_ stand by and watch as you kill yourself like this.”

When time resumed, Byleth was so weak and dizzy he could barely stand. He had to lean against Stranger, despite everything screaming at him to _move_. 

Stomach churning and mouth too dry to speak, he tried to look for Jeralt, but his vision was little more than splashes of color now. He caught a glimpse of a red blur and began to hear voices, but those voices faded in and out, harmonizing into the sound of the rain.

“Hey now—”

“N-no—”

“—along now.”

Byleth knew there was a possibility he would hit Jeralt, but he still had to try. It was all he had left. A part of him knew deep down how useless it would be, but another, more reactive part drowned out the first with its lies, telling him Jeralt could still be saved. Lies he desperately wanted to believe. His eyes burned as he dropped Stranger’s reins and fumbled with the sword on his belt. He lunged. The man reappeared and blocked the sword once more.

And just like that, he knew. He _knew_ he could not save Jeralt, that his father was going to die. 

Tears were streaming down his face by the time Monica plunged the knife into his father’s back. As Jeralt fell to his knees, Byleth was already in motion. Half-running, half-crawling, he reached his father’s side just as Monica and the mysterious man teleported away, and he gathered his father’s torso into his arms.

“Sorry . . .” Jeralt said, wincing. “Looks like I’ll have to leave you now.”

Byleth’s mind raced through their lives as mercenaries and all the times Jeralt had shrugged off injuries that would have maimed or even killed others. He had never given much thought to the notion his father would one day die, so the realization that he _could_ came now as a wrenching surprise he wasn’t ready for, would never be ready for. The child in him shied away from the truth. 

_You can’t go,_ Byleth thought. _You can’t die._

Jeralt gripped his son’s forearm and stared at him for a moment, as if considering. “To think the first time I saw you cry . . . your tears would be for me,” he mumbled. “It’s sad and. . . . yet I’m happy for it. Thank you . . . kid.”

As his last words faded and Jeralt’s head fell back one final time, Byleth released the big, choking sobs that had been building up in his chest. 

* * *

2 Harpstring Moon, Imperial Year 1186

Byleth awoke with a start, gasping for air. His eyes were wild with confusion, his body covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he rolled out of his bedroll with a half-muffled groan. His stomach churned painfully with the motion, as if he was the one who had been stabbed, and he felt hot. Too hot. The heat was blistering beneath his skin, roiling in his blood, and he could barely catch his breath at all. There was no Manuela now to see his discomfort, no Dorothea or Edelgard. The inside of his tent was too dark to see, but he ripped away his clingy blankets and stood on shaky legs. Grabbing fistfuls of the tent’s canvas to steady himself as his vision swam, he half-walked, half-stumbled his way out into the night wearing nothing but his underclothes.

_Did I overeat? Was I poisoned?_

There had been attempts before, in other lives.

His mind went back to the bowl of stew he’d eaten with Dorothea. The bowl of stew he had given to Edelgard. There was no way he alone could have been poisoned; it would have had to be the entire cauldron, which wasn’t likely. He’s had terrible dreams for as long as he could remember, dreams of sprawling battlefields and colliding armies, but nothing like this. This was too raw, too visceral. If this was what life would be like without Sothis, then he wanted no part of it. All he could taste was bile, sharp and acrid on his tongue. When he clutched his chest, he felt his heart beating furiously against his ribs like a bird trying to escape its cage.

 _What is . . . this?_ he wondered while another wave of crippling nausea overtook him. He didn’t know whether he missed Sothis . . . or hated her.

The blast of freezing cold air was soothing as it hit him, a much-needed relief for the fever. He wobbled out of his tent with another groan and a bleary glance around. The fires and braziers were little more than coals now, signaling that morning wasn’t too far off. He looked at Edelgard’s pavilion and the imperial guards outside it. They had stopped talking under their breaths when they saw him emerge into the low light and were now watching him curiously. Byleth ignored them.

Head reeling, he shuffled towards the gully behind his tent and crumpled beside it. He heaved, retching into a few ferns. As his fingers sank into the snow, he kept his eyes shut tight. Still, he saw Jeralt fall, heard his dying words. It felt as though Kronya’s red, hate-filled eyes were burned into him like a brand.

 _But she’s dead,_ he told himself miserably while his splayed fingers sank deeper into the snow. _She’s_ dead. _I made sure of it . . ._

After his past three lives, he had all but given up on saving Jeralt. Requesting a different knight to assist his class that month hadn’t worked (and it had been difficult to see the hurt in his father’s eyes when he asked Rhea for Catherine’s help instead). Even attempting to orchestrate a new mission in the labyrinth beneath Garreg Mach hadn’t been enough to save him. Jeralt, it seemed, was always destined to die, whether it was at the hands of Kronya, in the field of duty, or a vial of poison, and it was his own meddling that made things worse.

Now, the feeling that he had failed his father resurged with a vengeance.

Distantly, he heard a few snickers and someone crack a joke about having too much to drink. Byleth didn’t care. The first time he lost Jeralt had hit him the hardest, like an altered golem. He wanted nothing more than to purge his memory of that day and forget it ever happened. But memories, he knew, were not as easy to purge as his stomach. No, memories lingered. 

His head continued to throb dully.

He didn’t know how long he kneeled there beside the gully before he felt someone’s hand touch his back. He flinched away as if he’d been punched, his eyes snapping open at once to a flash of red. He turned reflexively and shoved, reaching for his belt and a sword that wasn’t there. Whoever it was stumbled back but didn’t go down.

“Wha—? It’s all right, Professor!” cried a voice. “It’s just me!”

When his vision cleared, he saw Ashe standing in front of him, one hand holding a torch while the other was raised defensively. Byleth stared at him for awhile, seeing flickers from his past lives: Dedue, Ashe, and Ashe’s grey-haired siblings cheerfully manning the kitchen of their inn, which was apparently named for a famous Duscurian hero, just on the outskirts of Arianrhod; Ashe, wearing a bright yellow surcoat emblazoned with a blue sun, while he stood beside Petra in all her Brigidine finery at one of Claude’s biennial round-table gatherings that were aimed at fostering relations between the leaders of Fódlan, Almyra, Brigid, Dagda, and Morfis; Ashe’s grunt of surprise as Byleth spun around without warning, ramming his sword through what he had believed to be another enemy. Byleth had dropped the Sword of the Creator as soon as he realized what he had done. That freckled face, green eyes wide and brows furrowed in mutual recognition, was almost identical to the one he saw now.

The concern in Ashe’s eyes was so plain to see. Byleth turned away with a pained grimace and hurled into the gully again. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave his former student an apologetic look. “Ashe . . . I’m sorry. . . .”

The former Blue Lion crouched down and offered him a lopsided grin. “No need to worry about me, Professor; I’ve taken worse beatings than that. I’m more worried about _you_. Are you all right?”

Again, Ashe extended his hand, and Byleth recoiled from it. “Yes,” he choked out. “I-I’m fine.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to get someone for you? I can wake Mercedes or Manuela—”

“No,” said Byleth sharply. “I s-said . . . I’m fine.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he retched again.

“That’s it; I’m going to get Mercedes,” Ashe announced. “You’re clearly unwell.”

Ashe turned to go. Byleth immediately lunged, grasping for his blue gambeson, stopping him in his tracks. “No!”

“It’s just a stomach ache,” Byleth lied, wiping his mouth. “Must’ve been . . . something I ate. It’ll pass soon enough. No need to wake anyone up for this.”

In truth, he didn’t want anyone to see him like this, dealing with . . . whatever _this_ was. It was bad enough that Ashe had seen. The last thing he wanted was to wake up someone else when he knew just how starved for rest they all were.

No matter what, he could handle things, he thought. He was used to handling such things.

“I don’t know if . . . Are you sure?” Ashe asked again, extending his torch to better see into his mentor’s face. “You’re so pale. . . .”

Byleth nodded. “I’m sure. I think the worst has passed already.” He stood up to prove his point, only for Ashe to grip his arm and start steering him away.

“We should get you near a fire at least. You’re bound to be freezing!”

Byleth twisted out of his grip. “That’s not necessary. You don’t need to fret over me.”

“But I—”

“Why are you awake anyway?” Byleth interrupted with a growl of irritation. “Shouldn’t you be asleep like the others?”

“I told Ingrid I’d like to keep watch tonight,” explained Ashe slowly while rubbing the back of his head with his free hand. “If I’m honest, I haven’t been sleeping so well.” He tried to smile but it was faltering and didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m doing all I can to stay busy. You know, useful.”

“I understand,” Byleth sighed, feeling another stab of guilt when he thought of how close Ashe had been with Dimitri and Dedue in past lives. “It’s a wonder anyone can sleep after everything that’s happened.”

For a moment, Ashe stared at him without speaking, as if debating something within himself. “Was . . . was it a nightmare?” he asked at last.

Byleth froze. Now it was his turn to stare.

“The nightmares are the worst part, I think,” Ashe continued softly. “They feel so real.”

Slowly, Byleth nodded and shivered. The cold was already starting to show its teeth as the illness slipped away.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

When Byleth exhaled, slow and deep, his smoky breath caught in the air between them. “No.”

“I’m a good listener, Professor. After Lonato . . . well, talking to you helped. Almost like you knew exactly what to say. I hope to repay you for that kindness someday.”

Byleth’s lips curled into the ghost of a smile. “Maybe another time.”

Ashe was never one to stay discouraged. “Can I get you anything?” he asked doggedly. “Some water maybe?”

Byleth shook his head. “I think I can manage from here. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Professor.”

“Goodnight,” Byleth said, a little too quickly, and then practically retreated back to his tent. He made sure the flap was tied securely before he crawled into his now-cold bedroll with another shiver. He lay on his side, watching the dim light of Ashe’s torch through the canvas. The light hovered there for a second or two, waiting, before it and the sound of Ashe’s bootsteps began to fade before disappearing altogether.

Byleth sighed. With that, a small weight was lifted from his shoulders. Now was not the time to dredge up his failures and revisit Lonato’s death, nor did he want to. Jeralt’s was hard enough on its own.

His teeth chattered as he reached for the ring that dangled on its chain around his neck, alongside the black eagles’ pendant. He rolled it between his fingers while he stared into the dark, too reluctant to sleep for fear of what new terrors the night might bring. This time, it brought little comfort.

Despite his best wishes, his mind remained as silent as the grave. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of this chapter is based on my own experience of unexpectedly finding a deceased loved one, which really screwed with me for awhile. For those interested in my current well-being, I'm still homeless at the moment but the situation is improving. I found a place I may be moving into sometime next month.
> 
> I posted the Azure Moon chapter of "Ends" (with a Hegemon!Edelgard that can also use the Divine Pulse to a degree) last month if anyone would like to read that.
> 
> I'm now interested in getting a beta reader, though I'm not quite sure how to go about recruiting someone. I realize Edelgard is something of a controversial character for many Fire Emblem fans so I'm reluctant to approach anyone myself. I think I have a good grasp of spelling, grammar, and word choice so it wouldn't be too time-consuming, but I could use someone to help me work out writing kinks in past chapters, future story ideas, resolving plot holes, character dialogue, pacing, character development, etc. Basically, helping me locate any errors that are too jarring or stand out too much. So if you'd like to help and have an excellent grasp of those things, please feel free to comment. I will of course credit your help in exchange. I can also beta your stories too, if you like. Believe it or not, I did graduate with a degree in English Writing years ago.
> 
> TL;DR Byleth relives Jeralt's first death and learns the hard way that Sothis was right: Human emotions are messy and can pack quite a punch. Ashe does his best to help.


	8. Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [A/N:] Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, internet fam. 
> 
> Chapter Warnings: hunting; violence; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
> 
> Chapter Tags: angst; friendship; hurt/comfort; dialogue; minor flashbacks; world-building; M!Byleth; Petra McNeary; Bernadetta von Varley; Marianne von Edmund. The platonic Petra & Bernie A support?

## Chapter Eight:

##  ~~The~~ Hunt

2 Harpstring Moon, Imperial Year 1186

By the time the worst of the snowstorm had subsided, relief was the main sentiment throughout the imperial encampment. Relief bolstered by an end to war and storm alike, and a tepid hope for what was to come. But underneath that outward veneer, a different kind of storm was raging, and it left the Ashen Demon with a growing sense of urgency.

The soft rasp of steel was soothing and familiar as Byleth sharpened the steel sword he had retrieved from the convoy earlier that day. With one hand, he held down the flat of the blade against a wood block while he filed its edge with the other. Honing the blade was slow, methodical work that allowed his mind to wander freely. Maybe that was a mistake in hindsight, given how often it wandered in unwanted directions, but it was necessary.

" _Take care of your blade,"_ Jeralt had told him once, " _and it'll take care of you. Think of it like a . . . a partnership of sorts. Got it? The battlefield is the last place you want to worry about a loose hilt or a dull edge."_

He hadn't forgotten. Every stroke revealed a little more of the sword's natural edge, enhancing it.

Byleth was glad for the sound. Even if it wasn't much, it still kept the silence in his tent at bay. So many things had been left to linger in the silence, too many words left unsaid, that now it only acted as a reminder. The dancing flame in the nearby brazier was a better companion than the dread he felt or the ache in his chest where Sothis had once resided.

He was used to being alone but never like this. Now, he could not feel Sothis at all or even delude himself into thinking she was still there deep within him, out of sight but not totally out of reach. That realization hit him with finality, over and over again, like a stone wall or a bolt from the blue.

She was gone. He was alone.

And his only consolation was the faint _thrump, thump_ that came from his own chest, so new and alien. He was still learning the other accompanying changes, slowly picking through the amplified feelings that floated up from the murky depths of human emotion. But putting names to them was, in a way, even harder.

He would have given a great deal to be back at the monastery. With so many hideaways to mull things over without being disturbed, it would have been easy enough to disappear among the flowers in the greenhouse or slip off to a shadowy corner of the library. Instead, he had already spent the better part of the day cooped up in his tent, poring over his journal and his maps, avoiding everyone. Especially Ashe. It was better this way, he told himself, easier to ignore their concerned looks and grating questions. He was _fine_ . . . or he would be, in time. Better if he could only sleep. He knew they were only asking out of a place of kindness, but now was not the time to dwell. The attention was distracting and far from enjoyable.

With the war effectively over, he had so much to do, so much to plan. Thales and Those Who Slither in the Dark to thwart, the Immaculate One's body to dispose of, an uprising to prevent, a Tragedy to avenge, a country to rebuild, and people to protect. As unsettling as the idea was, the time to reveal the truth of everything he knew could be rapidly approaching. Just the thought of tackling it all on his own made him feel Sothis's loss all the more keenly . . . and somehow miss Claude too.

" _Yikes. Is that all, Teach?"_ the master tactician would say, blanching at first, but start laying out the maps with a grin. He would relish the challenge of these dilemmas, but Byleth only felt exhausted, his lack of sleep more pronounced. His mind stalled every time his eyes slid over to the Sword of the Creator lying uselessly on a chest in the corner. The same chest he had thrown Jeralt's wooden charm into this morning because he hadn't wanted to look at it anymore.

Just another stark reminder.

Every time it happened, there was a constricting ache in his chest, a jolting look away, and a renewed interest in his task. His grip on the file tightened, turning his knuckles white, to the point it was uncertain if there would even be a sword left by the time he was done.

Without the Divine Pulse, he couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety. So much depended upon him now that the slightest misstep could doom them all. So much time had been spent just trying to reach this moment, he hadn't spent much, if any, on planning what he would need to do after defeating Rhea. Between laying out improved lesson plans, grading essays and exams, recruiting the students from the other houses, deepening his bonds with all of them, preparing them for the coming war . . . When would he have found the time?

One thing was clear now: He _had_ come to rely too much on Sothis and the Divine Pulse. For years, he had taken them for granted, never stopping to think about what he would do without either.

He didn't yet know how Edelgard and Hubert planned to deal with Those Who Slither in the Dark. That, he thought, would probably become clearer in the coming days and weeks. Given how their attack on Shambhala went in his last life, he knew a direct assault was probably out of the question. This time, they had no trump card, no Rhea to neutralize the Javelins of Light. Not to mention he had no idea what they could do with her body to prevent it from falling into Thales's hands. With the clock ticking down, the lack of meaningful answers left him feeling on edge. Still, he was determined to try. Damn it all if he let anything happen after getting this far.

His hand stopped, hesitating. _I will not fail them again._

Just as he was about to put down the file and take up a whetstone instead, a blast of cold air hit his face. Surprised, Byleth looked up to see Petra slip inside his tent. She was wearing a buckskin winter frock and had a brave bow looped over her shoulder with a second bow in her hands.

"Petra," said Byleth warily as he wiped down the sword and set it aside with the file. "How can I help you?"

In response, the wyvern lord gave him a mysterious smile and extended the bow out to him as he sat cross-legged on the ground.

Byleth stared up at it, hopes sinking. "What's that for?"

"We are going hunting," she told him.

"' _We'?_ " Byleth repeated, reluctantly taking the bow.

"Yes," she said, nodding. "I was asked by Edelgard to provide fresh food for the refugees. Dorothea was thinking you would like to help."

Byleth sighed. _Of course. Thanks, Dorothea._

"She said she did not see you today. Are you hiding like Bernie, Professor?" Petra asked. "Fresh air will be doing you goodness!"

His correction was listless and nearly automatic. "You mean ' _The fresh air will do you good.'"_

She would have to give him some time to finish up, but Byleth knew better than to argue with the proud Brigidine princess. It had never worked out well for him in the past. " _As stubborn as a nesting wyvern, that one,"_ Claude would sigh, but even he'd had to find creative ways to compromise whenever it came to dealings with the archipelago. " _But also surprisingly . . . scary sometimes. If given a choice between the two, I think I'd rather take my chances with the wyvern."_

" _Wouldn't you say, Teach?"_

_Yes . . . and Brigid is lucky to have her._

* * *

Stranger chomped at the bit while Byleth saddled him, securing the various straps and cinches one by one while a newly-sharpened sword sat in its scabbard on his hip. He had already foregone the horse armor like usual. When that was done, Byleth checked to ensure the saddle would be held in place without being too tight and then nodded to himself in satisfaction. Just like Jeralt had taught him all those years ago, and he had taught in turn.

In response, the gentle gelding shook his shaggy mane, flicked his ears to and fro, and tried to swing his head away from the post he was tied to, as if to say, " _Come on already. Let's go."_

Byleth smiled at that. He knew the horse's antics would have earned him a finger wag and a half-exasperated " _Now knock that off"_ from Jeralt. After all, it was Jeralt who had been the one to name him, with a chuckle and a soft " _Well, hey there, Stranger"_ not long after the gold exchanged hands. Byleth remembered giving his father a curious look afterwards, remembered Jeralt's awkward shrug. " _What? It's as good a name as any."_

He reached out to scratch the misshapen star on Stranger's nose, but the horse promptly shoved his entire greying muzzle into his hand instead, surprising him. As if he remembered too. Logically, Byleth knew that there was no way the horse could tell where his thoughts kept slipping off to, knew that he was only projecting, but Stranger's soulful eyes seemed piercing.

 _I know, boy,_ he thought, his smile fading. _I miss him too._

"Professor, I think he's worried about you."

He had forgotten that he wasn't alone. After starting slightly from the sound of the voice, Byleth's eyes slid over to the source, bundled up in a navy-blue cloak. A silver brooch, noticeably modeled in the shape of von Edmund's raven, fastened the cloak around her neck as the voice's owner sat nestled between two hay bales, as quiet as a church mouse. She was watching him after concluding her visit with Dorte and the other horses. Even now, the animals were still gathered along the fence in the nearby paddock, waiting patiently for her return.

Much like her words, Marianne's doe-eyed expression was filled with kindness, but Byleth noticed the lingering darkness underneath. It was sad in a way. As eager as she had been to support Edelgard this time, almost ardently so, the war had not been kind to her. It had taken the same toll on her as it always did, chipping away bits and pieces of her newfound resolve.

" _I am certain we are giving her far too little credit, Professor,"_ Dimitri had told him once, pacing the floor as a twitchy bundle of nerves while waiting in his solar for his first child to be born. " _Marianne is the strongest person I know. In a sense, stronger even than me."_

He cringed, his smile twisting. " _At least that's what I keep reminding myself. Gustave, tell me. Is it_ meant _to be this nerve-wracking? I would almost prefer another battle to all this infernal waiting!"_

Guilt settled in Byleth's gut like a stone. It was times like this, when he could see through Marianne's brave façade, that he wondered if she was as happy with Lorenz (and Ignatz before him) as she had been with Dimitri, whom she had dearly loved. Love that had been visible in her expression and every facet, every passing smile, tip-toed peck on the lips, and clasp of hands . . . even into their twilight years, as she sat by a dying Dimitri's bedside while clutching his hand, surrounded by their grown daughters and oldest friends. And as part of his duties as archbishop, it had fallen to Byleth to give his former student his last rites. Those, he remembered, were some of the hardest words he had ever spoken.

So, for her sake at least, he pushed aside his initial irritation and forced a gentler tone. "Oh?"

Marianne nodded, cheeks coloring, and her gaze was telling as it flitted towards the top of his head. "We all are . . . um, after your transformation, I mean." She paused to worry her lip between her teeth. "How are you feeling, Professor? Please forgive me for saying so, but you look tired."

He chuckled a little. _Then I suppose that makes two of us._

"You're right. I didn't sleep well," he admitted while adjusting the bow looped over his shoulder so it was no longer digging into his side, "but I'll be okay."

His mouth twisted. _I have to be._

"If that's the case, then is it wise for you to go hunting with Petra? Perhaps it would be best if someone else went with her instead."

"You've seen the refugee camp," he said slowly. "They need food, shelter, blankets . . . We can't possibly spare everything they need. What kind of person would I be to say no?" He chose not to give his other reasons for going, his own creeping discomfort with the idea of letting any of his students wander so far out of sight, into unfamiliar wilderness that held wolves, bears, demonic beasts, and Goddess knew what else.

"A human one," Marianne said, her voice softening.

Without warning, another memory was shaken loose, this time of Sothis and her watery smile in the Holy Tomb. " _Not even the gods can bend mortals to their whims, and mortals are so very . . . fragile yet complicated."_

He sucked in a shaky breath, turned back to Stranger, and pulled a stirrup loose with too much force. "It's a _hunt_ , not a battle," he growled. "I'll be fine."

_Surely, I can do this much at least._

This time, Marianne nodded as if she believed him. "I'll pray for you, Professor," she said, stunning him with her sincerity.

Byleth could only give her a hard stare, not knowing what to say. Ordinarily he would have accepted that without thinking too much of it. But now . . . Would Sothis be listening? He couldn't help but wonder. Would she even care? She had left him here, alone and powerless, after taking away the one tool he could use to bring back Dimitri and the others. Despite knowing how important it was to him. Just thinking of it now, his hands seemed to clench into fists by themselves. If only Marianne knew the truth. . . .

He circled around Stranger to adjust the stirrup on the other side. Halfway there, the yard filled with the sound of hooves, and he looked up to see a welcome sight. Petra rode up to him with — of all the people to expect — Bernadetta in tow. He was a little surprised to see Petra riding a horse instead of her wyvern, but both women sat in their saddles with practiced ease, their bows slung low by their feet.

"Are you ready to go, Professor?" Petra asked, grinning. "I bring wonderful news. Bernie will be coming with us."

At the mention of her name, the most elusive Black Eagle glared at her friend. She looked predictably unhappy, as if she was already wishing the ground would open up and swallow her whole. Byleth had no doubt that was the foremost concern running through her mind.

He tried to give her a reassuring smile. "Did you volunteer to come along, Bernie?"

The bow knight shook her head fiercely. "Nu-uh, no way! I was coerced! I was perfectly happy to stay in camp, thank you very much."

Byleth shared a questioning look with Petra, who, unsmiling now, furrowed her brow and sighed. "Edelgard ordered her to go," she explained. "She wanted Bernie to be leaving her tent and getting the fresh air also."

"You see?" Bernie said, crossing her arms. "I was clearly coerced, just like I said!"

Byleth ducked his head to adjust the second stirrup and smiled to himself. That definitely sounded like the bossy house leader he knew. Dragging Bernie to class and other parts of the monastery had become something of a habit. And thanks to her efforts, Bernie was not the same recluse she had once been. She had become less anxious, venturing outside of her room more and more often over the years.

At any rate, it wouldn't hurt to have Bernie along. Her bow and incredible aim, like Petra's, could be useful in a pinch.

"It will be okay," he told Bernie. "It's only going to be you, me, and Petra."

Those words had their intended effect, causing Bernie to deflate. "I . . . That's true. . . . Maybe it won't be so bad if you're coming too, Professor."

Marianne stood up. "Hello, Bernadetta. Hello, Petra," she said, nodding to each.

While Petra extended her usual greeting, Bernie seemed to brighten at once upon noticing her friend. "Oh, hi, Marianne. Have you come to visit Dorte? Do you need any help?"

"I did, thank you, but I must be going now," Marianne said, smiling at them all as she drifted away towards the mess tent. "Good hunting!"

Left in her friend's wake, Bernie quivered. "Do I have to?" she whimpered.

"Come now, Bernie," said Petra brightly. "I can give you another hunting lesson. How is that sounding?"

"Okay, I guess. . . ."

While they talked, Byleth grabbed his quiver, untied Stranger, and climbed into the saddle. "I'm ready."

They set out along the road one by one, following Petra's lead. Imperial soldiers scurried out of their way as they rode through the camp's outskirts, past their planted stakes and other hastily-constructed defenses. They left through the southern entrance and aimed for a dark line of trees on the horizon. Beyond, in the far distance, loomed snow-capped mountains.

They rode for some time on a muddy road that cut across the Tailtean Plains, where farmers and travelers alike still turned up arrowheads, brittle blades, and other remnants in the stony soil of the one-thousand-year-old battlefield. Eventually, they ran out of the heath that surrounded the Kingdom's capital. Tall pines rose skywards, enclosing the path ahead. Once past the ominous tree line, they passed out of view of the city and could no longer see its prominent cliffside castle. Now they were entering Faerghus's wilds, rife with thick woodland and rugged terrain.

At first, they spoke quietly as they traveled through the trees. Bernie excitedly pointed out to them the various flora she recognized from a handbook she had read in the monastery's library. Stunted pines and mossy rock faces, ferns and flowers poking through patches of snow, distinctive shrubs and bushes with red berries. Then they rode in silence for a time as they journeyed deeper into the woods, until Petra at last veered off the road.

Byleth followed after the expert huntress without hesitation. Their horses picked their way through the brush and between the trees until they emerged into a small clearing.

Petra pulled her horse to a stop. "Here, Bernie," she said as she swung out of the saddle. "This looks like a good place for practice."

Byleth dismounted too and sank up to his calves in fresh snow.

Bernie, meanwhile, still sat huddled in her saddle, with her cloak pulled up past her chin and hood pulled so far over her head that her eyes were her only visible feature. "B-but it's so c-cold. Do I have to? C-can't I stay here and watch the horses or something?" By now, she sounded miserable, her voice muffled, but she clambered slowly out of the saddle anyway.

"Oh, Bernie," sighed Petra. "Have confidence! I can tell this lesson will go better than the last."

They tied their horses to the trunks of a few stray birch trees and removed their equipment. Byleth took off his gauntlets and placed them in a saddlebag before taking the bow and looping it over his shoulder. He couldn't remember the last time he had gone hunting. Thanks to Jeralt, he was no stranger to it, but it had been a long time since he had needed to use the skill at all.

"It is time to start thinking like a hunter," Petra continued, placing both of her hands on Bernie's shoulders, "and stop thinking like prey. You can do this, Bernie. I will show you."

Bernie nodded and took a deep breath. "Y-yeah, you're right. I can . . . do this. I'm sure it'll go a lot better than last time. . . ."

Byleth watched the two for a moment, feeling his lips start to curl and a warmth fill his chest, before he had to turn and trudge away.

 _Hunting,_ he reminded himself. _The refugees._

"I'm going ahead," he said, looking forward to setting out a little on his own. He knew there was no sense in waiting around. Bernie and Petra would be safely nearby with the horses to warn them of any danger, and the sooner he found something, the better.

Petra nodded in a way that said she understood before she returned her attention to her pupil. "Now listen, Bernie. Do you see the shadows beneath those trees? We can hide there to take our prey by surprise—"

Byleth pressed on, into the trees once more, until he could no longer see the two when he looked back. He kept moving, starting to search for signs of game. After moving too close to a heavyset spruce tree, he startled a flock of ptarmigans, who took flight at once with a panicked flutter of wings, but Byleth was too unprepared and too slow on the draw. They were already too far away by the time he had his bow in hand and an arrow nocked.

He cursed and watched them go before he continued, keeping his eyes trained on the ground. This time, he was lucky; it wasn't long before he came across tracks in the snow. He stooped down to peer at them. Deer, he recognized, but he couldn't tell if they were fresh.

Deciding to take a chance on them anyway, he began to follow them as they wound between trees, through brush, across a small creek, and onto a sparsely-covered hillside. He moved slowly across the snowy expanse, over untouched snow that crunched beneath his boots, before the trail diverted back again into cover.

Despite everything, Petra, it seemed, caught up to him in no time.

She crept upon him like a ghost, and he almost leapt out of his skin when he saw the sudden flash of movement beside him. Almost instinctively, he raised the bow and started to draw back the string. With his heart hammering away in his chest, he recovered quickly when he realized what, or who, it was. The Brigidine princess had adapted to Fódlan's cold, northernmost regions much better than he'd thought. He hadn't even heard her coming.

It was enough to make him briefly wonder . . . What else had he missed during the five years he had been missing in action?

Petra gave him an apologetic smile. She already had her bow in hand, with two ptarmigans bound together by the feet and draped over her shoulder. Their white feathers were stained with an all-too-familiar shade of red. He felt his stomach lurch slightly, and he had to look away, his heart still pounding.

"You are doing well," she said quietly, her breath lingering in the cold air. "These are fresh."

Byleth nodded, grateful for that at least.

She gestured towards the tracks. "May I?"

"Go ahead," he told her. He knew their task would go by faster if he let her lead. The sun had already dipped below the trees, and the chill was beginning to bite through his heavy tunic and jacket. Before long, they would need to start heading back or else risk running into greater danger.

Petra said nothing as she guided him deeper into the woods. She moved so stealthily, so fluidly, as if gliding across the snow, that he couldn't help but be impressed.

Along the way, they glimpsed a silver fox observing them from behind a stump. Byleth raised his bow to take aim, but Petra touched his arm and shook her head.

" _No,"_ she mouthed at him. " _Bad luck."_

He stared at her in puzzlement, but she moved on, offering no more of an explanation than that. When he looked back again, the fox had disappeared.

Not long after, Petra froze without warning and pointed towards a break in the pines.

A small doe was grazing on a half-buried shrub.

Petra waved him forward, and they both sank slowly into a crouch. Byleth raised the bow, fitted an arrow to the string with his half-numb fingers, drew it back, and prepared to release. But as he stared down the deer, his hands began to tremble, and the arrowhead dipped.

He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself, but every time he focused on the deer, he saw another one of his students falling in its place.

Hubert windmilling backwards as a barrage of arrows sprouted from his chest.

Ingrid's pegasus releasing a spine-chilling scream as it plummeted from the sky, its wings clipped and bloody, rider and mount twisting and thrashing together as they fell.

Raphael and an entire battalion of Alliance soldiers disappearing underneath a volley of imperial arrows and fireballs.

Edelgard, staring up without seeing at the vaulted ceiling of the imperial throne room, while a crimson flower bloomed in the hollow of her throat, welling up around the shaft of an Almyran arrow.

Then all he could see, all he could feel, was blood, gleaming red, slick and warm on his palms and fingers. He reached for the Divine Pulse in a blind, consuming panic before he remembered where he was, remembered everything.

A minute or two passed like this, with Byleth struggling to release the arrow, before the decision was sealed for him.

A single arrow whistled by his ear and struck the doe squarely in its chest, behind the foreleg. The deer flinched and tried to sprint away before it crumpled in the snow and lay still.

Byleth cringed and lowered the bow, still shaking, still struggling to breathe, still trying to calm his racing heart. He felt dizzy, like he was going to be violently sick again, and that possibility frightened him. Hazily, he wondered: Were these feelings going to be permanent because of Sothis?

Petra was crouched by his side in an instant, gripping his arm like a vise with worry written in the lines of her face. "What is wrong? Are you feeling sick, Professor?" The two ptarmigans dangled on her shoulder like marionettes, and his stomach churned again. "This is not like you."

"I . . . I don't know," he said, mouth twisting. Slinging his bow back over his shoulder, he willed his stomach to settle and pinched his nose between his forefinger and thumb because, somehow, doing that felt better than doing nothing at all. "Maybe I am."

Like with Ashe, he didn't what to tell her or where to even begin. Should he try to explain that he had been seeing a mischievous ghost-child, claiming to be the Goddess herself, before she left him like this? Or that, thanks to her, he'd had the ability to reverse time? That he had watched them all die, even killed some of them himself, more times than he could count? How could he ever admit to them that, even with Sothis's help, and multiple attempts, he had still proven himself to be either too stupid or too useless to save everyone he cared about?

Who would believe that?

He had only tried once to tell someone the truth, after the incident during the Rite of Rebirth, and reversed that decision quickly after. He knew Petra was not Rhea, could not be more unlike Rhea, but the memory remained of how quickly her serene smile had faded after the initial shock, her green eyes hardening. " _I feel blessed that you have come to me with this. Tell me, Professor: Who do you suspect? There will be a thorough investigation, I can assure you. We will leave no stone unturned and bring the might of the Church to bear upon its enemies."_

Even Sothis had seemed surprised, perking up and remarking, " _What? Byleth, this sounds . . . dangerously close to zealotry."_

He remembered hesitating at that, thinking of Edelgard and Hubert, his resolve weakening. " _And if . . . a student is implicated?"_

" _Professor, even you must know how grave it is to conspire against the Church of Seiros and defy the Goddess,"_ the archbishop had chided without her usual gentleness. " _Fódlan does not need another Nemesis. No, this time, no one will escape our justice._ _I will not allow the past to repeat itself."_

" _I . . . see,"_ he had said before reaching for the Divine Pulse to erase the conversation. Maybe that had been cowardice on his part, but he hadn't been willing to light the fuse for that witch hunt.

Could he afford to take a chance on Petra? How willing was he to regret it?

"Are you . . . needing a moment?" she asked. "Or a vulnerary?"

Frowning, Byleth shook his head.

"My shoulder is available. Would you be willing to talk about it? You always listen with patience."

His eyes flashed, and he shrugged out of her grip. "I appreciate that, Petra, but right now we have more important things to worry about than—"

He stopped and looked down as soon as he felt both of her hands wrap around his. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, he was almost surprised by the warmth and sheer determination in her smiling face, the intensity in her brandy depths.

"Once, a wise professor told me to stop pushing myself too hard. Do you remember?"

He scowled at her but said nothing.

"You are reminding me of Edelgard at times," she continued slowly, squeezing his hands. "You are both stubborn . . . and secretive, though I am not understanding why. You show great kindness to your friends but not to yourself." She shook her head. "Professor, you are both carrying burdens that you are not needing to carry alone. Do you have understanding?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't tell Dorothea," he growled, but it wasn't even clear to himself if that was an order, plea, or both. If Dorothea knew about this moment of weakness, she would not drop it half as easily. "Don't tell anyone." _Please._

"That is not what I meant, but you will have my promise not to tell Dorothea on one condition," she said. "Take your advice. Please, do not overdo yourself. This is the time to heal, recover."

"But I can't."

"Why?"

He shook his head and stood up, only for the dizziness to intensify. "I just can't." He freed his hand from her grasp and moved away, trying to put distance between the conversation, himself, and the things it kindled within him: His own self-doubt; the sinking suspicion that he had brought all of this upon himself, that he somehow deserved this; and the tiny, unfamiliar voice in the back of his skull, so unlike Sothis's, that said he was nothing without her, the Crest of Flames, or the Sword of the Creator. They fed into his fears that his future had slipped further from his control and brought to light he was not enough on his own, that he would not be able to stop what was coming.

He tried ignoring it, seizing instead on the good in what Petra had told him. There was the warmth in his chest that told him he was among friends and colleagues, that he belonged, and her reassurance that he had made a difference in his students' lives, that he mattered. It reminded him of the lengths he had gone to save those who could as well as the distance he still needed to go.

All of it at once was more than one man could handle.

"I . . . I'll carry the deer," he threw awkwardly over his shoulder. "It'll save us a trip back with the horses."

Helplessly, Petra watched him retreat. "You can trust us, Professor," she said as she stood and dusted the snow off her leggings. "Dorothea and I — and everyone else — We are here today because of your doing as much as Edelgard's doing. Please, do not forget that."

_I know._

Mouth twisting, Byleth tried not to look too closely at the deer's carcass as he heaved it over his shoulder. Even that wasn't as effortless as he had expected it to be. As effortless as it _should_ have been.

The walk back to Bernie was long and fraught with a tense silence, darkening shadows, and Petra's furtive little glances. Along the way, his nausea subsided, and the dizziness from earlier morphed into a full-blown headache. More than that, he was exhausted and felt guilty for being so hard on Petra. He wished that she and Ashe hadn't been present to see him lose it so badly.

When they returned to the clearing, it was already well past dusk. They found it mostly as they had left it, with Bernie crouched over something small and furry. She saw them coming and shot up, almost falling over in the process. Whatever it was became a swinging, brown blur as she bounced towards them on the balls of her feet.

"Petra! Professor! Look!" she cried. "I did it! I got one! Exactly like you showed me, Petra!"

Byleth peered down at the dead rabbit clutched in the bow knight's hand. He cringed, feeling the throbbing inside his skull worsen.

Petra beamed at her friend. "Well done, Bernie! You are finally a hunter!"

Bernie nodded furiously. "Yes, finally! Oh, I can't wait to tell Yuri! He'll . . ." She blinked and trailed off, as if noticing the deer thrown over Byleth's shoulder for the first time. Her stormy eyes widened. "Wow, Professor. Did you hunt that by yourself?"

"No, this is Petra's work," he said while making his way over to the horses. "I was just support today."

Both women watched in silence as he hefted the deer onto Stranger's back, behind the saddle. That done, he reached into one of the saddlebags to remove a length of rope — a multipurpose item Jeralt had shown him countless times how important it was to always have ready in his kit — and did his best to secure the deer to the saddle.

"Oh!" said Bernie suddenly. "While you were gone, I also gathered these." She held out her satchel, which normally held her paints and brushes, and opened it to reveal that it was full of the red berries they had spotted earlier. "I . . . I know it's not much, but it's something, right?"

Byleth stared at them dubiously. "Are they safe to eat?"

"Whaa—? Of course they're edible!" Bernie snapped before she went quiet. "Or . . . at least I hope so. . . ."

Alarm bells were now going off in his head. "Wait. You didn't _eat_ any, did you?"

She glanced at Petra and gave her a plaintive look, as if pleading for help, as she turned a vivid shade of crimson. The wyvern lord only shrugged helplessly, looking torn. "I . . . may have eaten a handful . . . or two. . . ." she mumbled. "I got peckish, okay! But I swear it's fine! Prickly, green leaves with red berries, just like the handbook described."

Byleth stared her down hard. "You're checking in with Manuela as soon as we get back."

"But I—"

" _No,"_ Byleth growled. "No excuses."

Bernie closed her mouth and frowned, looking a little taken aback.

Gently, Petra took the rabbit from Bernie, tied a rope around its leg, and hung it from her own saddle, which was already sporting the ptarmigans and, surprisingly, three more rabbits already. "Our hunting had great success today. I will be returning tomorrow for more," she told them, "but hunting by wyvern should be faster."

After untying her horse, she vaulted easily into the saddle and grinned wickedly at Bernie. "Tomorrow, I will be making a better huntsmaster of you, Bernie."

"H-huntsmaster?" Bernie repeated, squeaking. "But . . . Wait a second. Why me!?"

Byleth dragged himself into the saddle. "You can do it," he said, nodding. "I believe in you."

"Aw, thanks, Professor! Maybe you're right," Bernie said, and something in the young woman's eyes glittered. "Bunnies beware, all will come to fear Huntsmaster Bernie!"

Byleth smiled at her enthusiasm, despite his headache. But as they rode along, he fell into another somber silence while Petra and Bernie were happy to continue the conversation.

"In Brigid, we would be celebrating your first kill. It is a . . . rite of passage among my people, proving that someone is worthy of their first mark. There would be food, song, and dance. . . ."

"Really? You know, that actually sounds kind of fun . . ."

"I am also liking that idea. If that is your want, we could be having one for you when we return to the monastery. I am sure it would give everyone great happiness. . . ."

Byleth only half-listened. Frowning, he stared at his hands loosely holding the reins. They were rough, calloused, used to taking life. Or so he had thought. Somehow, impossibly, he felt worse than before they left. More tired. What had happened back there? he wondered. Why had his body betrayed him? Would he have found the strength to release the arrow if they had come across something worse than a deer?

His hands balled into fists. _What is happening to me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always, always welcome. :)
> 
> TL;DR Armed with the knowledge of what happened after the war in his other lives, Byleth starts planning... only to be enlisted by Petra for a hunting trip. Along the way, he learns that there is such a thing as too much war, too much death, and this has far-reaching consequences.


	9. Sink / Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [A/N:] Sorry, internet fam; the brand new chapter is actually Chapter 8. I inserted the new chapter before this one, which has been tweaked a little to accommodate it. As always, all comments and kudos are appreciated. :) 
> 
> Chapter Warnings: kind of political/strategic (sorry).
> 
> Chapter Tags: angst; friendship; hurt/comfort; dialogue; M!Byleth; Felix Fraldarius; Edelgard von Hresvelg; Yuri Leclerc; Hapi; the former Blue Lions; some Sylvain/Mercedes; mentions of Felix/Annette.

## Chapter Nine:

## Sink ~~or~~ Swim

4 Harpstring Moon, Imperial Year 1186

 _This,_ Byleth thought as his leg buckled beneath him, _this was a mistake._

He hit the ground hard, falling sidelong into a slurry blend of mud and snow, and was drenched in an instant. The impact sent a shock of pain rippling through his body. For a moment, he lay stunned and winded, staring up at the colorless sky as it spun in circles overhead.

If he’d thought the past few days were bad, then today was certainly not getting any better. He had tried doing what he could, but it was exhaustive work relaying messages across camp, coordinating with the other generals, tallying the prisoners and the wounded, checking supplies, ensuring there was enough food to go around even with Petra’s daily hunts . . . Briefly, he wondered what Sothis would have to say if only she could see him now . . . before he shoved that thought deep down inside.

Byleth’s mouth twisted. _Why did I ever agree to this?_

When asked, he hadn’t even stopped to consider _why not_. The decision had been an easy one, borne of a dual desire to distance himself from his earlier foray into the ruined city as well as distract from how exhausted he felt. More than that, he needed to train if he wanted to figure out the extent of what was wrong, so he had simply agreed to the request, like he almost always did. He’d thought he would be ready for this, ready to ease back into the thick of things, but clearly he’d been wrong.

Once again, everything hurt, but this time he had only himself to blame. He should have known Felix wouldn’t hold anything back. The mortal savant had only become more abrasive, more taciturn, since Arianrhod, stewing in silence as he mourned his father’s death in the same vein he had mourned Glenn’s.

Slowly twisting around while his hands struggled to find purchase in the icy sludge, he started to rise and cringed when another wave tore through him. It was a sharp, piercing ache that gravitated outwards from his leg and shoulder, turning the rest of him to lead.

Byleth fell back to the ground with a groan.

 _Yes,_ he thought miserably, blinking away the heaviness in his eyes, _this was definitely a mistake._

It wasn’t long before a stubbled face, frowning in a stern and unamused way, appeared above him, eclipsing the sky.

“You left your flank open,” Felix accused. “You weren’t supposed to fall.”

When a gloved hand materialized, Byleth eyed it for a second before he reached out to take it, allowing the mortal savant to pull him roughly to his feet. Byleth winced; his battered body protested the lurching movement, reminding his yellowing bruises of the beating he had taken during the fight through Fhirdiad.

Byleth rewarded him with a pointed look as he silently shook away the mud clinging to the sleeves of his jacket and tried wiping off his gauntlets. Even he had to admit Felix was right. Somehow, he had left himself open. But how? One moment they were filling the camp’s practice yard with their ringing blows; the next, his sword was passing through empty air. He barely even _saw_ Felix sidestep the incoming swing or his riposte, but he did feel it when something slammed into the back of his knee.

His head spun with unanswered questions. When did Felix get so fast? Or . . . was he slower now? He knitted his brows and frowned at the possibility. The effort of keeping up with Felix had been harder than he remembered. . . .

Had he relied on the Crest of Flames, on Sothis, so much?

His mouth twisted again. Was this simply one more loss he would have to get used to? His heart was already so heavy.

A training sword laid in a puddle of mud nearby. Felix stalked over and picked it up, flicking it a few times to throw off the mud, before he handed it back to Byleth with a satisfied grunt. Then he stepped back, assumed a wide-legged stance, and held his own blade level with his jaw. As his amber eyes darkened in anticipation, his lean body went as taut as a drawn bowstring.

“Again.”

Byleth nodded and went in swinging. 

Felix parried the first strike easily enough, but Byleth continued the assault — a thrust, a cut, a feint — trying to hit Felix on the hand, the arm, the leg. He even came close a few times, which he took as an encouraging sign. Still, _close_ was not nearly enough. Everywhere his sword flashed, Felix’s was sure to follow, blocking or diverting him with expert precision until Felix at last closed the distance between them. A second later and their blades were locked together.

“This is hardly a challenge,” growled Felix as he pressed against the bind, trying to gain leverage and pivot his sword around. “You need to focus. Shut out all distractions.”

Byleth countered, denying him that leverage. “I’m _trying_.”

“Then try _harder_.”

A growl of frustration was torn from Byleth, and no sooner had it left him than they pulled apart abruptly. Byleth followed up by lashing out at his opponent with an immediate jab, which Felix seemed to be expecting because he leapt away at once.

They began to circle one another around the yard, like two starving wolves searching for an opening in the other’s defense. Turning over Felix’s words, Byleth tried to push through the fog of exhaustion clouding his senses, tried to forget the small crowd of soldiers that were gathering around the yard to watch. Forget Fhirdiad and its survivors picking through the pieces of their lives in the still-smoldering rubble, the injured men and women who were still lying in the infirmary and stockade. The nightmares he relived every time he closed his eyes. Dedue, Dimitri, Catherine, Cyril, Rhea, and even Sothis. _Especially_ Sothis. He tried to forget all of these things and the feelings they now evoked. He focused instead on the sword in his hand and his body’s deliberate movements. The squelch of mud and snow beneath his boots. The weight of the weapon in his hands. He watched Felix intensely, picking apart his intentions as they were signaled.

Nothing existed outside of the yard. Nothing but Felix, himself, the swords in their hands, and a newfound sense of calm.

Byleth stopped, staggering his stance and planting his feet. 

Felix’s mouth bowed slightly. “Where’s your fire? Your drive? You should find it again before you get yourself killed.”

“I was . . . injured,” Byleth retorted, hating the hesitance in his own voice. How could you explain to someone that you had just lost an unseen part of yourself? More than that, how could you explain in a way they would understand?

His grip tightened on his sword as he channeled his strength, preparing to unleash a devastating windsweep. 

_Without Sothis, what even am I—?_ he began to wonder, and the sense of calm shattered like a dream.

Without warning, Felix lunged. Byleth wasn’t ready for it, but he moved to parry anyway. Their swords slid against each other with a brief rasp before his gave way altogether. Then he felt the blow glance off his gauntlet and knew he had lost.

They lowered their swords, dropped their guards.

“As if that matters in a real battle,” Felix scoffed at him. “If I was your enemy and wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead, injured or not. Stop pitying yourself. So long as you’re alive, you can keep going. You can still fight.”

Byleth shook his head and considered that for a moment, mouth twisting. It sounded eerily familiar, like something he might have said once, ages ago. Maybe not in those exact words, but that lesson all the same. He was left with a bitter feeling to be on the receiving end of it now. Was that what he was doing? Feeling sorry for himself? Something in his gut coiled painfully, and it was that feeling, as if he had just been caught red-handed in the act, that told him maybe Felix was right. 

“Maybe you should consider becoming a professor, Felix,” Byleth said, smiling thinly.

Felix looked away with a sullen _“Hmph.”_

“I mean it. You’re perceptive enough, and you definitely have the skill for it.”

It was a different path than the ones Felix had already traversed, once as Duke Fraldarius with Dorothea at his side and once as a meandering sword with Ingrid, but Byleth had no doubt the swordsman could excel in it with a pinch of patience. And of all his ex-students, the one who engendered the most patience was . . . Annette. He couldn’t help but smile a little, knowingly. 

“It’s my turn now,” said Felix, changing the subject.

Slowly, Byleth raised his sword and nodded.

Felix rushed him like a hurricane. His attacks were fiercer now, faster, blurring together as he blitzed in from all sides. Moving instinctively, Byleth parried one after the other, but only by the skin of his teeth. As Felix continued his merciless onslaught, Byleth quickly found himself losing ground. Now, he barely had enough time to react, much less think. Their swords threw off sparks every time they clashed, and his wrists were starting to hurt from absorbing the shock of each blow.

He hardly caught the trick that wrenched the training sword right out of his hands. It all happened so fast — a small _pop_ that bled into a sharp pain as his wrists twisted. His hands opened as if they had been burned. Then the sword whirled away, and he heard it make a wet, plopping sound when it landed.

In another blink, Felix had the tip of his sword pointed at Byleth’s throat. “I win again,” said the swordsman grimly.

“You were holding back,” Byleth accused, massaging his wrists. Experimentally, he swiveled one and grimaced when the motion sent stabs of pain. A physic spell later and the worst of the damage was undone. He frowned, not knowing whether he should feel surprised or crushed.

Felix’s mouth twisted slightly. “Perhaps.”

The yard filled with tepid applause and admiring voices. But as Byleth made to retrieve the sword from the muck, the sound of loud guffaws drowned out the rest.

“Well done, Felix!” someone laughed. “Bravo! Great form as always!”

Both Byleth and Felix turned as one to look for the source of the commotion, only to find Sylvain and Mercedes among the soldiers milling around the yard. The duo stood out against the small sea of black and red thanks to Sylvain’s turquoise armor accents and Mercedes’s altered habit.

Out of the corner of his eye, Byleth saw Felix scowl at them.

“You too, Professor!” added Mercedes with a cheerful smile and a bounce of her ash-blonde curls. “I’m sure you’re just having an off day. You’ll be feeling like yourself again in no time.”

Byleth exhaled deeply, still massaging his wrists. _You think so?_

Despite his first instinct being disbelief, her smile was still oddly comforting. Like a single torch keeping the dark at bay. If there was one thing he had learned throughout his lives, it was that there were few things that could rattle the young woman’s serene demeanor. Not even the harsh reality of war could dampen her spirits or impede her desire to breathe color back into the lives of her friends and companions.

He plucked the sword out of the mud and gave it a few half-hearted swings. When he turned around again, he saw that the crowd was already starting to disperse and Felix had gone to speak with his two classmates over by the fence. He went to join them, sword in hand.

Sylvain was leaning against the fence and smirking. “The ever-lovely Mercedes and I were just out for a stroll around camp when—”

“Is there a reason you’re here?” Felix demanded. “Byleth and I were in the middle of something.”

Frowning now, Sylvain almost looked offended by that. “Geez, Felix, would it kill you to relax once in awhile?” He ran a hand through his tousled hair and recovered with an even broader grin. “Actually, there is. Her Majesty’s summoned us all to her tent for a meeting. Mercedes and I figured we’d deliver the news to you two ourselves. So no need to thank us or anything.”

Mercedes nodded in agreement.

 _Finally, some good news,_ Byleth thought, grateful for the diversion after taking his beating for the day.

“Thank you, Sylvain,” he said mildly and then turned to Felix. “We’ll have to pick this duel up again another time.” 

Felix glowered. “How annoying.” 

Byleth and Felix ducked under the fence and walked over to the nearby armaments tent, where various swords, lances, axes, and other weapons were gleaming in the torchlight. They silently set to work wiping down their swords with all the speed and efficiency of experience before they returned them to one of the racks. When they left, Sylvain and Mercedes were still waiting, only now they were also holding hands.

Sylvain slipped his out of Mercedes’s as soon as he noticed them approaching. “Ready to go?” he asked, a little too eagerly.

Byleth nodded. “As ready as we’ll ever be. Lead on.”

And just like that, Byleth and the former Blue Lions slowly started for the heart of camp, past rows upon rows of uniform tents. These, as Byleth had noted long ago, were plainer than their Kingdom and Alliance counterparts, rife with colorful banners and the heraldry of the nobility. 

Somewhere along the way, Mercedes and Sylvain had rejoined their hands. 

The encampment was almost a small, bustling city in its own right. They weaved through clusters of imperial soldiers, darted around horses, pegasi, and wyverns. Some soldiers even hurried out of their way after recognizing them. As they walked along, Byleth began to feel better in the company of old friends.

That is, until Sylvain unwisely decided to open his mouth.

“I’m so glad I got to see you thrash the professor, Felix. You got in some great hits,” said Sylvain. “You know, Professor, I still haven’t forgiven you for failing me that one time.”

Byleth shot him an incredulous look. “You _fell asleep_ in the middle of a certification exam.”

“Yeah, so? You would have fallen asleep too if you had the night before that I did. You would not _believe_ the girl I was with. I think she was one of the Knights—”

“I think I can imagine,” said Byleth pointedly. “After all, your room at the monastery is right above mine.”

As Sylvain’s toothy grin fell, he picked uncomfortably at his fur collar. “Huh. You . . . don’t say. I mean, how much did you. . . .?”

“I was grading papers. I heard more than I wanted.” And at the time, Sothis had been the only one amused.

“Well, can you blame me?” Sylvain asked, turning defensive, while they waited for a loaded wagon, stalling in the mud, to rattle by. “If you’d only seen the girl, you’d . . .” He trailed off, and as if remembering where he was and whose hand he was holding, he glanced sheepishly at Mercedes. “You know what? Never mind.”

Mercedes giggled, unperturbed. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”

“Oh, Mercedes! That was such a long time ago! No one, and I mean _no one_ , could compare to you now! Your beauty, your faith, your compassion. . . .”

“Sure, sure,” she chirped.

They were almost within sight of Edelgard’s pavilion now. Felix made a sound of disapproval, somewhere halfway between a scoff and a groan.

Suddenly, Sylvain let go of Mercedes’s hand. Sylvain, the taller and more muscular man, reached out to grab Felix by the shoulder and then pull him into a headlock. “Oh, Felix, don’t pretend you’re better than us.”

The two scuffled, with Felix struggling to free himself from his friend’s grasp. “ _—Get offa me!”_

“Fine, fine,” Sylvain laughed and, knowing better than to push his luck, released him. Felix furiously shoved him, which only made Sylvain’s lopsided grin widen.

“Seriously though, lighten up,” Sylvain told him. “We’ve all seen how you look at Annette. I swear I’ve even heard you humming her songs in your tent!”

That remark seemed to catch Felix off guard and cause him to lose steam. “Shut up,” he mumbled, blushing.

“To be fair, Annie seems to really like you too!” Mercedes added, trying to be helpful.

Somehow, impossibly, Felix’s face went from a faint pink to a blistering red. He muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “idiots.”

Byleth couldn’t help but smile tiredly. Dorothea was right, he thought; some things would never change, and for that, he was grateful. After everything, he still treasured these moments in between.

Sylvain was the first to reach the entrance. With a playful little bow that made Felix bristle, he grabbed the pavilion’s flap and held it open for them. “After you.”

They filed inside slowly, one after the other. With so many members of the Black Eagle Strike Force crammed within, it was a tight fit. Mostly the former Blue Lions, he noticed at once, with the exception of Yuri, Hapi, Edelgard, and Hubert. Seeing them all together like this, gathered around the same table and working towards the same goal, gave him the strangest feeling. A feeling of belonging, of rightness. Like he was exactly where he needed to be.

Felix, still red-faced, made his way to the side of the table that was opposite Annette, much to her disappointment, while Sylvain and Mercedes wedged themselves into the opening beside the young woman instead.

Byleth had to squeeze between Ingrid and Hapi for a view of the war table, which was once again strewn with maps, books, quills, inkpots, and pieces of parchment. One unfurled map caught his eye in particular because it detailed Fódlan’s northwestern coast, all the way from House Nuvelle’s former territory to House Kleiman’s. Evidently Edelgard and Hubert had been plotting today.

Looking up from the map, Byleth immediately noticed Ashe staring at him intently, lost in thought. Once he realized he’d been caught, Ashe shot him a sheepish smile and mouthed a quick, _“Feeling better?”_

Mouth twisting, Byleth gritted his teeth and nodded back. Then he looked away, towards Edelgard and Hubert at the table’s head. When his eyes met Edelgard’s, she furrowed her brows at him and gave him an amused half-smile that he couldn’t help but return.

Someone cleared their throat. “Well, we’ve waited long enough,” said Hubert briskly, bringing Byleth’s attention plummeting back down to the matter at hand. “It looks like everyone who was sent for is now here. Time to begin.”

“Welcome,” said Edelgard to the group. “I know the past week has been a grueling one, but I trust everyone has gotten some well-earned rest since the battle. As you might expect, I have summoned you here today to discuss our next course of action. It’s no secret that much of Fódlan is uneasy. This is why I have decided that, in a week’s time, the bulk of our army will be returning to Garreg Mach.”

At that, the table erupted. Byleth, content to listen, crossed his arms but said nothing. A chorus of concerned voices spoke out at once, drowning each other out . . .

“Your Majesty, surely—”

“But what are we going to—?”

“We can’t just _leave_ —”

. . . until Sylvain’s voice rose to the top. “What? So soon? Fhirdiad is in ruins. We still have refugees—”

Edelgard held up a hand to signal for silence until their voices gradually died down again. “By all means,” she said tiredly, “speak your minds, but please do so one at a time. Faerghus is your home, and the refugees here are your people. You deserve to be heard.”

“If it’s all right with you, Edelgard,” Mercedes said before the others had a chance to cut her off, “I’d like to stay here, where I’m needed.”

“Of course you may stay, Mercedes. Your skill as a healer is second to none.”

“I’m staying with Mercedes,” said Sylvain, sounding determined.

“Me too!” Annette added. “I may not know as much as Mercie, but I can still do something. Gather water, help rebuild, anything!”

Ashe nodded. “Annette’s right. I won’t leave while there’s so many left homeless and hungry. Not when I can make a difference.”

Edelgard gave each an understanding nod. When no one else spoke up, her piercing eyes settled on Felix.

“I’ll stay,” he sighed in response to her unasked question. “Someone has to make sure the Boar gets his last rites. He . . . deserves that much at least.”

Again, Edelgard nodded. “What about you, Yuri? Will you be staying also? I’m curious where everyone stands.”

“Oh, you can’t get rid of me that easily,” said the tricker with a sly grin. “Besides, it sounds like we’ll have the situation here covered. And if necessary, I can think of a few acquaintances back at the monastery who might be willing to help with the right incentive.” He paused long enough to glance at the almost bored-looking woman by his side. “You coming too, Hapi?”

Hapi thought about it for a moment before, deciding, she shrugged. “Eh, why not. It’s not like I’d be much help here . . . or have anywhere better to be.”

Edelgard nodded and moved on. “Ingrid?”

The falcon knight was biting her lip, looking torn. “Your Majesty, please forgive the question, but why now? Why so soon? The battle for Fhirdiad was only a few days ago. We’ve hardly had the time to heal our injured, let alone catch our breaths.”

“I know,” said Edelgard, frowning. “I received . . . disturbing news yesterday from the Alliance. With Almyra posturing for war, Hubert and I decided it would be best to move the army to a more centralized location if only to better defend against an attack.” She paused. “We’ve come a long way but we have a very different kind of war ahead of us now. And as they say, it’s all too easy for one hand to destroy in seconds what another built in a lifetime. We simply cannot afford to take any risks.”

Ingrid frowned. “I understand. It’s far from ideal, but we must position ourselves to defend all of Fódlan.” 

“Exactly,” Edelgard agreed. “So will you be staying, Ingrid?”

“I . . .” Ingrid glanced between Felix, Sylvain, and Ashe while her frown deepened. “I will if you ask it of me.”

Edelgard smiled at her. “Just as I hoped. I am leaving one third of my army here, and I am placing you in charge of it, Ingrid.”

Stunned, the falcon knight opened her mouth as to speak then promptly shut it again. “Your Majesty, I-I don’t know what to say. . . .”

“Since we began the Black Eagle Strike Force, you’ve proven yourself to be one of its most dutiful and competent knights. More than that, command comes naturally to you.”

Slowly, Ingrid summoned up a smile. “Thank you, my lady. I am deeply honored.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you, Ingrid!” squealed Annette.

“Careful, Ingrid,” Sylvain warned playfully, “don’t let that go to your head.”

“Do we have any orders, Your Majesty?” asked Ashe.

“Yes. Do what you can for the people here and quell any unrest. If the Knights of Seiros are willing, put them to work making amends.” Edelgard hesitated. “There is another . . . matter I will need your assistance with.”

Sylvain grinned. “Sure thing, Your Majesty. I’ll be your knight in shining armor.”

The reaction to that was uncomfortable and immediate. While a faint blush crept into Edelgard’s cheeks, the shadow hiding behind her stiffened. Scowling, Hubert looked like he might be already plotting Sylvain’s demise. “Erm, thank you, Sylvain,” Edelgard continued. “It is of the utmost importance that you guard this object. You must not let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“Whatever it is, you can count on us,” urged Ingrid.

“Good,” said Edelgard softly. “You’ll be guarding the Immaculate One.”

The room went completely silent.

“Well, that’s . . . not what I was expecting,” said Sylvain, shaking his head.

  


* * *

  


The rest of the meeting was brief if uneventful. Mostly hashing out the details of Edelgard’s plan. She looked as tired as he felt by the end. Once it concluded, the members of the Black Eagle Strike Force trickled out as slowly as they had entered. Byleth, however, chose to stay. He stewed over what had been said in his mind, and continued to massage his wrists, while he waited patiently for the last to depart, leaving him alone with Edelgard and Hubert.

He wandered over to them just as Edelgard finished sealing an envelope with wax. When she looked up, he noticed she was smiling again.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Why exactly are you covered in mud?”

Smirking, Hubert looked him up and down from head to toe. “Why, indeed.”

“I fell,” said Byleth, frowning, “while dueling Felix.”

As she handed over the letter to Hubert, Edelgard’s brows furrowed. “I see.”

Byleth’s mouth twisted slightly. “You know, you didn’t ask me if I wanted to stay.”

“I suppose I didn’t,” she said, and her voice was surprisingly even. “How thoughtless of me to assume our tactician would want to remain with most of our army. Is that what you truly want?”

“No.”

“Then whatever is the issue?” Hubert asked.

Byleth stared at him, not quite knowing what to say. He felt a little hurt that he hadn’t been asked, despite how ridiculous that was. Choice, or its illusion, was just one of the things Sothis had stolen from him. With so much of his life feeling like it was spiralling out of his control, he would have welcomed any chance to reclaim some of it. He had to believe that even a false choice was better than none at all. Still, he tried to bury that feeling beneath a stoic veneer. “As your tactician, you didn’t consult with me about this future course of action either.”

Edelgard sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. The timing of all this is terrible.”

“Who sent word of the Almyrans at the border?”

“Holst Goneril if you can believe it.”

Byleth nodded to himself. That made sense and wasn’t all too surprising, given Claude’s defeat at Derdriu. But why ask Edelgard? he wondered. Why not the other lords of the former Alliance?

“Speaking of which,” Hubert interrupted by flourishing the letter, “I’ll find Lorenz and ensure this finds its way into his father’s hands.”

Edelgard flashed him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

In response, Hubert gave a quick bow and left in a hurry.

Once he disappeared, Byleth turned back to Edelgard. “Well, you must have a plan then, don’t you?” he asked. “For the Immaculate One? We wouldn’t be pulling out so soon otherwise.”

“I may have thought of something,” she admitted. “But whether or not it’ll _work_ is another matter altogether. I’ve spent days mulling it over.”

“Well?” Byleth asked. “What is it?”

At first, Edelgard said nothing. She just smiled in a sad and wistful sort of way that made him all too uncomfortable. “‘In the beginning, amid the great, cloudless ocean, Fódlan came to be,’” she recited softly, still smiling. “My mother’s favorite story from the Book of Seiros. Perhaps it’s . . . fitting in a way to return her to the sea. I like to think so at least.”

“The sea?” Byleth repeated, confused.

“Come now, Professor. If we cannot destroy or move the body conventionally, then it stands to reason we must defer to the unconventional, no? Wasn’t that one of your lessons? There are other uses for magic than to heal or destroy.”

Slowly realizing, Byleth could only stare at her in shock. “You mean to warp her,” he said slowly. His thoughts raced as soon as the words were out. _Would that even work? Could it really be that easy?_ It was hard to imagine Those Who Slither in the Dark would ever be able to find her body at the bottom of the sea.

Edelgard nodded. “Onto a ship, yes, if the Alliance will cooperate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TL;DR Determined to push through whatever funk he's fallen into, Byleth duels Felix and learns a little more about his new limitations. The former Blue Lions decide to stay in Fhirdiad during Edelgard's meeting while tensions rise beyond the former Alliance's border.


End file.
